Cuba introduces new customs limits on personal goods

The baggage carousels at Cuba’s airports often look like they’re disgorging the contents of an entire Wal-Mart or Target store. That’s due to the shoddy, scarce or expensive consumer goods in Cuba. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans and Cuban-Americans fly to and from the island each year thanks to the easing of travel restrictions by the U.S. and Cuban governments over the last five years. Their Cuba-bound checked baggage has become a continuous airlift that moves nearly $2 billion of products ranging from razor blades to rice cookers, blue jeans to car tyres. But the Cuban government on Monday is enacting new rules meant to take a big bite of that traffic, sharply limiting the amount of goods people can bring into Cuba in their luggage, and ship by boat from abroad.

People are really unhappy. All the clothes and shoes that I have come from my granddaughters in Spain or my siblings in the U.S..

Maite Delgado, a 75-year-old retired state worker

The Cuban government says the restrictions are meant to curb abuses that have turned air travel in particular into a way for professional “mules” to illegally import supplies for both black-market businesses and legal private enterprises that are supposed to buy supplies from the state. Under the new rules travelers will be barred from bringing in items worth more than $1000. There’ll also now be allowed to bring in 10kg of detergent instead of 44; one set of hand tools instead of two; and 24 bras instead of 48. Four car tires are still permitted, as are two pieces of baby furniture and two flat-screen televisions.

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