Havana/The agroforestry company Pinar del Río only exported last year 36 tons of coal of the 400 it produced, but by 2025 it promises very different results. According to its director, Leduhan Menéndez CardenteyThey will produce less than in 2024, about 300 tons, but will export 250.
That is, if last year only 9% of the production was intended for sales abroad, this would be more than 83%. How will they achieve that difference? Menéndez Cardentey’s explanations to the provincial press seem more voluntarism than reality, and refer to the approval of a “financing scheme” in dollars.
From coal sales, says the official, most, 54%, will be “direct to the producer” (30% to the state budget and the rest will be “negotiable with the producing company and the exporters”). “This can multiply the production volumes since the producer would have a benefit in currency,” says Menéndez Cardentey. It is not clear, however, how and to what extent they can materialize this.
At the end of last year, Coal producers from Sancti Spírituswhich regretted that the percentage they received was 20% – in front of the State that the State received – denounced the difficulties of dealing with the government. “The company spends up to seven months without paying. They do not pay until they sell coal outside the country,” one of those producers told this newspaper.
“Production has never been paralyzed, but the volumes that were previously made” are not produced, “
On the other hand, the explanation of the drop in exports in 2024 is, for the director of the agroforestry company Pinareña, in the American embargo on the island. “Production has never been paralyzed, but does not produce the volumes that were previously made,” he explains to Guerrilla. “In 2024 we had a complex situation with shipping companies because of the blockade.”
Another thing the government wielded before the National Assemblylast July, by exposing the economic collapse of the country and the fall of production in almost all items. Then, the Minister of Economy and Planning, Joaquín Alonso Vázquez, acknowledged that although the figures in the export of tobacco, lobster and other fishing products had been recovered, “these growth were not enough to compensate for the decrease of the nickel and other products of mining, honey, coal, crop and sea shrimp, and biopharmaceutical products”.
The reasons, listed by the minister himself, did not include the “blockade”, but the lack of supplies, energy and fuel, in addition to “logistics problems and the decrease in some prices in the international market.”
In the same place, Alonso Vázquez said that of the entire export plan of goods, the first months of the year only 62% had been fulfilled, compared to 78% in the same period of the previous year, which makes it more difficult to comply with the prediction of the agroforestry company Pinar del Río.
Marabú coal supposed Black gold For the Cuban state. The Government, until now, was awarded 50% of the $ 340 charged per ton to export. An article published in Granma Last year he informed that the agroforestry Matanzas paid for each ton of coal around 200 mlc (freely convertible currency), then equivalent to 172 dollars. This same product is sold in the US for about 400 dollars and, in the case of Premium, For almost 490 in Spain, where a recent creation company – between embers – matters from the port of Santiago de Cuba to Vigo, in Galicia.
The difference between the price paid to the Cuban producer and the cost for the foreign consumer is $ 228 per ton or, in the case of the premium, of 318. This includes the quota of the Cuban state, the transport and the benefit of the final marketer. Of the data of Granma It followed that the Cuban State stays with $ 168 per ton, since it gave 172 to the producer, who has traditionally received better treatment than those of other agricultural sectors.
