“What the country needs to do is produce,” he said. “Sufficient merchandise is what will lead to shorter lines.”

Limited rationing has already begun in many parts of the country, with stores restricting the number of items like bottles of cooking oil that a shopper can purchase. The policy announced by Ms. Díaz appears to go further and apply the same standards across the country of 11 million people.

The Cuban economy crashed with the fall of the Soviet Union, plunging the island into a more than decade-long period of misery and hunger that ended with the arrival of subsidized Venezuelan oil in the early 2000s.

The latest shortages and rationing appear to mark the end of a phase of relative prosperity, but conditions are nowhere close to the deprivation of what is known as Cuba’s “special period.” Cuba’s leaders say that while tough times lie ahead, there will be no return to the worst days of the post-Soviet depression because the island has diversified its economy and built trade ties with countries around the world.

Food stores in Cuba are government-run, with products highly subsidized and others wildly overpriced by global standards. Every Cuban receives a ration book that allows him or her to buy small quantities of basic goods like rice, beans, eggs and sugar each month for payment equivalent to a few United States cents.

Cubans with enough money can buy more basic goods at “liberated” prices that are still generally below the world average. At the highest of Cuba’s three tiers, brand-name goods, including high-quality rice and fancy jams, can be purchased often for two to three times the price in their country of origin.

Ms. Díaz said chicken would now be sold in limited quantities in every type of store — with cheaper chicken limited to 11 pounds per purchase and the more expensive variety capped at two packages per purchase. Low-priced soap, rice, bean, peas and eggs would now be sold only in limited quantities per person and controlled through the national system of ration books, she said.