Cuba closed the sugar harvest 2021-2022 with just 52% of the planned production plan, as reported this Wednesday the official newspaper Granma.
The rate would mean some 431,000 tons of sugar, according to official forecasts released last December, which set production at 911,000 tons, according to Eph.
If so, this would be one of the worst results of an industry that has been in progressive decline for years. According to official information, of the 35 sugar mills that participated in the harvest that ended on May 20, only three fulfilled their production plan.
The Cuban state group Azcuba reported that the delivery of sugar to all Cubans is guaranteed through the ration card (2.5 kilograms per month per person), a document in force since 1962 for the distribution of basic products.
? Technicians from the Project and Commissioning Department @zetivc2010 start continuous centrifuge in the @EAACiroRedondo.
? These machines were repaired by foreign technicians, our specs. they took on the task with self-preparation and effort.@GAzcuba pic.twitter.com/scDcCdctnX— Emp. Industrial Technical Services ZETI Villa Clara (@zetivc2010) May 25, 2022
According to information offered at a meeting of the National Assembly of People’s Power last December, Azcuba’s objective was to allocate some 500,000 tons to the domestic market.
“MULTIPLE” CAUSES
The causes of the low yield of the harvest are “multiple”, he explained according to Granma the Director of Communications of Azcuba, Dionis Pérez. They affect “objective problems that affected the country and others of an organizational nature.” In this sense, he pointed out difficulties with the supply of oxygen after the breakdowns in the plant that produces this input, which caused a delay of three months in the repairs and preparation of the plants and the delay of twelve days in the start-up of the factories. .
He also considered the financial factor among “the most influential”, and blamed it on the strengthening of the economic, commercial and financial embargo applied by the United States to Cuba, which had a direct impact on the acquisition of resources for the repair and maintenance of machinery, the transportation and industry.
To this was added difficulties related to the availability of fuel, as well as problems of administration, labor and technological discipline, and low agricultural and industrial performance.
Cuban President describes the current sugar harvest as “bad”
The sugar industry, a sector classified as “strategic” for the island’s economy, has been going through a crisis for several years with production reduced to just over a million tons. In the 2020-2021 period, when 38 plants in the country were ground, only 66% of the planned plan of 1.2 million tons of sugar was reached.
Cuba had 156 operating factories in 1959, at the triumph of the revolution, which in that year produced 5.6 million tons of sugar and later rose to 8 million in the best harvests, between 1970 and 1989.
Efe/OnCuba.
