Cuba’s sugar industry headed toward worst season ever as production falters By Reuters

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) – The Cuban sugar trade is barreling once more towards its worst season ever, in line with official media reviews and sources, threatening to dent each nationwide satisfaction and financial progress.

The 2022 harvest is ready to fall properly wanting final yr’s file low, in line with official knowledge and two native sugar consultants. It’s at present operating a minimum of 30% shy of the communist-run authorities’s objective of 900,000 tonnes.

Final yr’s crop of 800,000 tonnes was the worst since 1908, simply 10% of a excessive of 8 million tonnes in 1989.

Sugar was as soon as the satisfaction of Cuba, vital to its rum manufacturing and driving international change and employment within the island’s huge countryside.

The federal government has not been capable of finance the sector’s wants – together with inputs, irrigation and spare components – as a result of robust new U.S. sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic.

“The federal government must import and possibly reduce the sugar quota on the month-to-month meals ration. The bakeries must scramble to make sweets,” stated one sugar skilled consulted by Reuters, who requested to stay nameless as a result of he was not approved to talk with international journalists.

The federal government had banked on a small improve in sugar output to fulfill its objective of 4% progress this yr after the financial system shrank greater than 11% in 2020 and grew 2% final yr, lowering sources out there to mills and plantations.

In a bid to revive the as soon as iconic sector, Vice President Salvador Valdes Mesa in February crisscrossed the nation urging mill staff, farmers and cane cutters to supply extra.

The harvest often begins in November and runs into Could, however this yr most mills opened in December and early January as a result of a scarcity of spare components and cane.

“They won’t get better the misplaced tonnage and the most probably state of affairs is they are going to fall additional behind as the issues are structural and lengthy standing,” the native sugar skilled stated.

A number of reviews within the official Communist Social gathering each day Granma confirmed key sugar-producing provinces, together with Villa Clara, Las Tunas and Cienfuegos, properly behind manufacturing objectives.

Different reviews and native sources indicated output in any respect 35 of Cuba’s sugar mills was not on time.

Cuba had earmarked 500,000 tonnes of sugar this yr for home consumption and deliberate to promote China 400,000 tonnes, a part of a standing settlement with the Asian nation.