Havana stores are empty. The difficulties in finding the needed or desired products is a constant cause of unrest in the city.
“What we really need is never there: food, toiletries and household items, to make a long list, only appear when we’re approaching mother’s day or the end of the year,” Elena, an old woman nearly 70, tells me near the central Coopelia corner.
For Magaly, a clerk at the Adidas Boutique in the Habana Libre Hotel, the company is going through one of its worst moments in terms of sales. “Our store has a good selection of shoes and stockings, but we have lost many customers due to the mechanisms established to bring the goods to the market. This year we almost didn’t receive any products”
Behind the scenes
Following the trail, we found Yenisey Hierrezuelo, Commercial Director of a branch of the Caracol Retail Chain, which owns the Hotel Habana Libre shops. She said: “All we do are the plans according to the demands in the shops and sales history of a particular product. We send them to the Head Office of the company, responsible for preparing the record of purchase of goods, which then must go through the lengthy approval mechanism. It is unavoidable that approvals, one after another, delay the purchases. “
Meanwhile, suppliers are responsible to take to the retailers products coming to market. They confess their neutral position regarding the problem and consider the excessive requirement of approvals give them a guarantee of payment.
“It is a system that Cuba applies because it gives security for the authorized payment. Before retailers didn’t have to ask the bank and then they didn’t make payments on time. With this variant, the government has helped facilitate settlement and gives guarantee of payment directly to the provider, “Nabil Ahmed, President of the Syrian firm Alina International said.
Unquestionably the centralization for authorizations to purchase foreign goods has paid dividends in the purification of the finances of companies and the country in general, providing safety and security to foreign firms that trade with the Caribbean nation for the collection-in agreed time-of monies owed.
However, for importers the way is still not fully clear. Bureaucracy remains extended for a marketing process should be characterized by speed and be motivated by the movement that life itself inspire.
A mechanism full of obstacles
For items to arrive at their destination, must traverse a long road full of obstacles which is the main cause of the shortages that attacks the malls today.
The application and consolidation of demand of products by each company are the first problem. They analyze the product attributes they want to buy and request an offer. But the average response time by suppliers is between 10 and 15 days to prepare and submit a tender. They proceed to discard those that do not meet the characteristics of the application and prepare a record of purchases.
The folder is presented to a committee of the company’s internal approval and, if approved, is subjected to further evaluation, this time by the purchasing committee at the highest level of the business group. This operation continues its process to the hiring committee of the organism to which the company belongs.
“After passing all these levels, they request a number of bank approval authorizing payment for the trading volume presented. Then proceed to the signing of the contract and issue the shipping order. The trip is another aspect that determines the time when the products arrive in stores “revealed Carlos Manuel Chavez, director of purchasing for Habaguanex Business Chain.
Prices
After the products go through the lengthy process described and finally arrive at their destination, there is another problem: the price. “There are clerks that do things to alter prices then justify it with anything. It cannot be that a product has a price here and a different one just around the corner, ” Mayelyn said, while leaving the Galerias de Paseo Mall.
There are many questions and contradictions regarding this topic. It is true that sometimes people have no knowledge of the treatment that is attributed to the goods within each business chain, but that does not mean that the omission, modification or alteration of prices ceases to be a common practice in establishments.
After receiving the products, each company will apply a mark-up, resulting in the gain. This causes the difference in value between units of the same product. But diversity can exist in the same commodity price within the chain itself?
Ernesto Bouza, Brigade Chief of La Epoca Store, explains that providers give credit on goods that have quality problems and this determines which equal products have varying prices in different stores, even within the same chain.
“In cases where a goods loses attributes for lack of quality, it is agreed how to deal with this in the negotiation process with the provider, if the sale feasible to the final consumer at a price lower than the set. In these cases the supplier provides a credit note for the lost value, allowing the company to lower its price and keep it for sale, although for less. Therefore in different stores unequal prices for similar products can be found, “he said.
On the other hand, there are items that may have fewer acceptances in certain market segments. This can lead to the marketing in longer terms and have a slow motion so that undergo stages of centralized sales for a single price for all stores belonging to the same chain, although it may be different between chains.
Moreover, to the official price mechanisms of each company you have to add the illegal alteration of prices in which often employees engaged, which is a violation of consumer rights. These are called “fines”. About this topic no sector worker agreed to make a comment.
The only way to counter this crime is constant supervision of the regulations, which inspectors of the Ministry of Finance and Prices and the company that owns every mall carry out.
“I always say that the fine comes out when the client makes the claim because the shopkeepers are based on existing methods that allow different prices for the same product. They use so-called floating code (in the box products have price 0), placed misleading prices and take to the store their own products to make money, “Manuel Millet, supervisor-inspector of the Ministry of Finance and Prices said.
“It’s a conspiracy,” Millet says, referring to how these people operate. “It’s unbelievable, they help each other, will be notified between stores there are inspectors and when we arrived everything is in order.”
Emilio Calvo, Director of Caracol, is aware of the situation in their establishments. “The disparity in the purchasing power of who owns and manages currency and who is not, leads many people to get it at all costs. The loss of moral and ethical values of a part of the population that justifies such conduct under: Every man for himself! or each can fix his problem by any means, and the false concept of “fighting” cover the real intention of who steals and cheats the state and the working people. I think these are the reasons that led this burden and vice remain in our society. “
