Cuba extends the free import of food and medicines until September 2025

In an attempt to mitigate the chronic shortage of basic supplies, the Cuban government has approved the extension of the tariff benefit that allows the Import without commercial food, cleaning items, medications, medical supplies and electric plants until September 30, 2025.

The decision, endorsed by resolutions 139 and 140 of the Minister of Finance and Prices on April 24, was published in the Official Extraordinary Gazette No. 13 of April 25, 2025.

Measurement

The original measure, stipulated in resolutions 27 and 28 of January 28, 2025, contemplated this exemption until April 30, but the persistent deficits of essential products and the energy crisis motivated its extension for another five months.

Since its establishment after the protests of July 11, 2021, the free import policy has been a temporary mechanism designed to relieve, in an expeditious way, the lack of food, cleaning and medicines that affect broad sectors of the population.

According to the official text, natural persons can bring these products as accompanied luggage without import value limit, as well as import electric plants, key to the constant blackouts recorded by the island.

In turn, the Ministry of Public Health authorized the entry of original containers of medicines and medical supplies without payment of customs taxes, while the general customs of the Republic established rules to ensure that the benefit is not distorted for commercial purposes.

RECRUETING IN THE CONTROLS

The customs body itself warned that during 2024 118 infractions related to these exemptions were recorded and that, only in the first quarter of 2025, 104 cases were counted with the confiscation of 8,978 kilograms of essential products. Consequently, I know They will reinforce border controls, demanding the presentation of the articles in separate packages for their correct inspection.

Beyond its immediate utility, the extension of free import evidenceds the structural challenges of the Cuban economy: an insufficient internal production to meet the basic demands and an energy system still far from recovering.

According to independent experts, the subsidy to the tariff exemption implies a fiscal cost that the State assumes for the sake of social stability, but does not replace the need to stimulate local manufacturing and diversify supply sources.

With the horizon put in September 2025, the government now played the last letter of its customs relief program. More than three years after his birth, the free import policy has served as an escape valve in the face of scarcity, but its temporal character raises the dilemma of indefinitely prolonging an emergency solution or seeking deeper reforms in the economic model. Both roads will have direct repercussions about the daily life of millions of Cubans.