Madrid/A golden egg chicken, chocolate, has escaped the Cuban state. Baracoa, the epicenter of cocoa cultivation, with 85% of the total produced by the island, has delivered to the private sector “hundreds of tons” of this seed whose prices rose in the international market such as foam. This Wednesday, In a published report In the newspaper Granmathe authorities and the medium itself regret the low vision of those who decided to “approve MSMEs with cocoa as a production line.”
The newspaper does not say names but accuses six MSMEs of having acquired 101 tons of cocoa, without specifying how long. One of them – which indicates location, in the rural town Paso de Cuba – bought from the agroforestry state and coconut almost half, 45 tons in three games, two of 20 and one of five, according to Ogli Pérez, economic director of the company and responsible for the sale.
Mayelín Frómeta Alayo, mayor of Baracoa, “deplora” – he says Granma– That “a main product, destined for the municipality’s industry, has gone to another part.” The Diario of the Communist Party does not doubt, in the midst of a pompous prose, to constantly accuse the “new economic actors already self -employed” to take advantage of a circumstance originated by the usual injuries of the Cuban economy.
Mayelín Frómeta Alayo, mayor of Baracoa, “deplora” – says Granma – that “a main product, intended for the municipality’s industry, has gone to another part”
The root of this matter is in the delay in the recovery of the cocoa factory of the municipality, which began in 2018 after its predecessor – inaugurated in 1963 by Ernesto Che Guevara– declared himself inoperative. The authorities then invested an unspecified amount of money, which the press placed at 43,000,000 “between national and foreign currency”, resulting in a mystery the amount they expected to make profitable very soon. “The product is going to be sold abroad to excellent prices,” said Reynaldo Mosqueda Martínez, an engineer and investor of the project.
The machinery came from Italy and Switzerland, which sent workers to the island to train the Cubans and monitor and start up. “That it would not be a matter of a few weeks – a very less in the time of numbers (sic.) And economic rams – it was known, although no one meant so dilated,” he says today Granma.
/ villaparadisobaracoa.com
Indeed, the process was extended for five years for little clarified reasons among which pandemic and the delay in the arrival of foreign technicians are the only ones that were revealed, although now Granma Add the “American economic-financial fence, detailed and multiplied.” The factory was finally inaugurated in November 2022, although it was not until the summer of 2023 when the press was widely dealing with promoting it, since until that moment it worked at half a gas.
But the fields, even with all the difficulties, did not stop producing and cocoa accumulated year after year in the stores. “The over -accumulated raw material grew, Raúl Matos Pérez, director of the agroforestry and coconut company in Baracoa. After selling a good amount, there were still 800 tons,” without counting what was stored in other municipalities and in deposits of other provinces of the East, “he says.
The solution then came from the private sector, dubstant to give out the coveted culture. Matos Pérez claims that his proposal was to initiate exports, but the idea did not prosper. “It was chosen to sell it to the industry and preserve it for when it will start,” he laments. But the raw material continued to accumulate, although to a lesser extent because of the crisis.
No one explains in the note who and why the decision was made not to export a product whose value grew in international markets, from 2,000 dollars per ton in 2022 to more than 12,700 in 2024. Currently, although the escalation has stopped, the price is around $ 8,000.
Censorship that he had not changed his mind “when it became evident that the reboot of the factory was extended and the opportunity to export would be lost”
Granma He believes that it was not a bad option to maintain the product for the State, but censorship that it would not have changed their minds “when it became evident that the reset of the factory lasted and the opportunity to export would be lost.” It is at that time that MSMEs and accounting, that “within their corporate purpose they had approved the commercialization of cocoa products”, received green light to devote themselves to the manufacture of chocolate.
“On the one hand there were logic ignored and piphs difficult to understand; and from the other, a voracious promptness that made mocking the carelessness,” the newspaper is quarrels, which considers that a “destination adaptable to any swell” as a production line ”.
The factory has a processing capacity of 7,000 tons, much more than 2,200 that, according to Granmahas delivered until 2024, and for this 2025, aggravated crisis, calculates only 150.
“Approve that 120 self -employed workers, not counting the more than 400 that informally,” they also processed and marketed cocoa, was not the faculty of the municipality’s authorities? “He reproaches the medium. This closes the first part of a report that will have a continuation perhaps tomorrow in which the medium threatens to count what happened next.
