Madrid/With more than a month late, the ports of Cuba are about to download rice corresponding to the notebook quota for the month of December. According to one Note published Thursday By the Ministry of Internal Commerce, the East and Youth Island were already supplied with a previous arrival, while for the west and center of the island it is expected to start the cast with the arrival of these ships and start with the one of last month January.
Although it has not been indicated where it comes from, it is foreseeable that the rice reached Santiago de Cuba, according to an official in the province of Granma, comes from the freighter River Confidenzethat navigates with Portuguese flag and traveled from Ciudad Ho Chi Minh. Meanwhile, in Havana today two bulkers who could contain the cereal, the Emerald Confidenzealso with a Portuguese flag and from Paraguagua (Brazil) and the Alyciaa maltés charger that comes, too, from Vietnam.
These are all the usual origins of rice that matter Cuba, along with the Uruguay Salvador Valdés Mesa said, visiting Thursday at Los Palacios. In this municipality the State has first delivered land to a foreign company, precisely from Vietnam.
All these are the usual origins of rice that imports Cuba, along with the Uruguayan, a country from where today arrives, also a freighter with a Panamanian flag
The vice president, who toured the agro -industrial company of grains in this population of Pinar del Río, urged local governments to resume the popular rice movement, an idea in which he is being insisted in recent years due to the downturn of production. The plan, originating in the special period of the 90s, consists in cultivating the product with traditional methods for family consumption, while the surplus is delivered to the collection centers for free sale.
In Pinar del Río there are more than 2,600 producers incorporated into this experience, with about 7,100 hectares in charge, compared to 5,000 of the “specialized sector”. “The biggest stimulus that has sowing rice today is the huge demand in the domestic market,” the vice president encouraged. But the State is aware that there are hardly any supplies, fertilizers and herbicides; also that any surplus that would have escaped from your hands to move on to the informal market and, in addition, that self -consumption does not solve the problem of cereal lack in a country where essential ingredient is considered in all meals.
Import expenses estimated yesterday Valdés Mesa in a generic “more than 300 million dollars”, but that more can be a lot. The 2023 Yearbook reflects that this year was invested 343,305,000, a record figure of the last five years (in 2019 there were 239,725,000), especially if the population’s drop is taken into account.
“It is necessary to raise national production and that these currencies can be used to meet other needs,” said Valdés Mesa, which attributed to the lack of inputs and fuel the fall in the production of recent years. Orlando Linares Morell, president of the Agricultural Group of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that the nearly 100,000 hectares planned for cultivation represent only 66% of what was planted in 2018.
Orlando Linares Morell, president of the Agricultural Group of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that the nearly 100,000 hectares planned for cultivation represent only 66% of what was planted in 2018
The vice president said that there are companies from several countries interested in investing in the production of rice in Cuba, although some of those that already existed have not been satisfactory. The case of the Sierpe is known, in Sancti Spíritus, where a Vietnamese project prospered until the Asians were They tired of Cuban inefficiency and They canceled His presence in 2022.
Despite them, Vietnam has continued to put Cuba in the spotlight, but now with new conditions. The Palacios project is carried out by a company in that country whose name is not known but that has been the first foreigner in receiving land in usufruct on the island since 1959, a demand that the Russians have also put on the table to the time to make investments.
At the moment, the company has 308 hectares to sow rice and, in addition to bringing its own specialists, contributing fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and other resources necessary for production, as well as hybrid varieties of the country, with which the demand for Seeds is reduced from 150 kilograms per hectare to 30.
