Cuban informal rates hit records while official floating rate lags

Cuba's informal currency market has climbed to new highs even as the government’s official floating rate adjusts more slowly, leaving a growing wedge that affects remittance receivers, shopkeepers and anyone buying goods priced in foreign currency.

ElTOQUE’s representative informal market rate, the TRMI, registered steep jumps between mid-2025 and January 2026. The TRMI put the US dollar at 400 Cuban pesos (CUP) on August 11, 2025, a level ElTOQUE described as “the highest value recorded since El Toque began publishing its reference exchange rates in 2021.” By January 25, 2026 the independent observatory’s figures shared by CiberCuba showed the dollar at 490 CUP, the euro at 530 CUP and the government’s virtual magnetic currency, MLC, at 410 CUP. ElTOQUE linked the earlier August climb to “a shortage of foreign currency and domestically produced goods, coupled with high demand for dollars and other foreign currencies.”

The Banco Central de Cuba updated official exchange-rate postings on its website around January 26–27, 2026, publishing Segment III tables for operations. Independent outlets reported that the central bank has accelerated peso depreciation in recent days, “driving the official dollar up to 435 CUP and the euro above 512 CUP.” That leaves an effective gap between the reported official dollar near 435 CUP and the informal TRMI dollar of 490 CUP, tens of pesos that translate into real losses for remittance recipients and traders who must convert foreign-held cash into pesos.

Policy promises made in late 2024 set expectations that the official rate would liberalize. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said the state had approved a floating exchange rate to be implemented in 2025 to recover remittance revenues and warned that the preexisting rate “does not encourage capturing remittances.” He noted that “if they need pesos, to receive money through the banking system, since they would get 120 pesos for 1 USD. However, in the informal market they could get 320 pesos per USD.”

For readers, the practical effects are immediate. A wider official-informal spread reduces the value of remittances when routed through banks, increases incentives to use informal channels, and drives up prices for goods tied to foreign-currency inventories, including items sold in MLC. The MLC itself moved from 207 CUP on August 11, 2025 to 410 CUP on January 25, 2026, illustrating how virtual-currency pricing has swung alongside the dollar and euro.

The TRMI’s methodology is explicit: “reference values calculated from the median of amounts listed in buy-and-sell currency ads posted in social media groups and classified ad sites.” That method has its critics within official circles, while some experts and academic review have defended its validity.

Expect more volatility as the central bank posts operational tables and traders react. Monitor the Banco Central de Cuba’s Segment III updates, elTOQUE’s TRMI series and informal-market quotations to see whether official policy narrows the gap or if the informal market continues to set the real price Cubans live with.