The Cuban Ministry of Transport has just released in Internet a classified site where you can post announcements of sale, purchase and provision of services for any class of vehicle. The name chosen for the site is “De todos” and as a sort of “official” Revolico of transportation , will be accessible to Cubans who have access both to Internet and the national network. According to the note of Granma newspaper, its “sole purpose is to facilitate efficient, practical and free of charge communication in a virtual market.” The possible categories for ads are those of cars, motorcycles, jeeps, bikes, trucks, vans, buses, minibuses, trailers, parts and accessories, rental cars, driving school and vehicles repairing, and it also includes the possibility of hanging “up to three photos that do not exceed 256 kilobytes.” Within the option that allows “create ad”, users can enter the amount of the desired price and the type of currency (CUC or CUP) in which they wish to sell. Also, as other ad pages, it has boxes to put your name, phone and email. It also has the option of advanced search by categories “phrase in the body of the ad,” price ranges and currency type. According to Granma, the website was created by computer engineers of the Ministry of Transport Information Services Enterprise (SITRANS by its Spanish acronym), and assures that “it was subjected to rigorous evaluation by CALISOFT, branch of the University of Computing Sciences which is responsible for the certification of quality , functionality and security of software products. ” The existence of this site is concatenated with various measures taken by the Cuban government regarding private transportation management . The first of these was Decree 292 of the Council of Ministers on September 27, 2011, authorizing the sale of used cars, which was banned until then. More than two years later, through the Decree Law No.320 of the Council of Ministers, the Cuban government passed one of the most criticized and even laughable measure they have taken so far, by the astronomical prices they assigned to new and used cars for sale in state agencies. Also recently “it was launched an experimental model of management in Havana from which it was created a Taxis Agency where cars serving in convertible pesos (CUC) were leased to drivers of CUBATAXI company.” This model includes the provision of fixing flat tires, car washing, mechanical repairs, among others, in addition to the newly created non-agricultural cooperatives dedicated to these services. As the culmination of this new scenario for transport in Cuba, ¨De todos¨ now attempts to catch buying and selling ads traffic and providing various services-in this case only for transportation, which was created on sites like Revolico with high demand in the population, even as an indicator of trends in prices in the domestic market. According to SITRANS director of information, Jorge Miguel García, quoted by Granma, the site is “a free access official portal, a way of democratization, social openness and a possibility of knowledge about the new changes that have been made concerning the transportation, information management and access to social networks, as part of updating the Cuban economic model.” The new site follows the trend of creating .cu spaces with the logic of international services like Facebook or blogging platforms that find in ¨La Tendedera¨ and ¨ Reflections, respectively, their domestic peers.
Author
Alejandro Ulloa
