The state group in charge of sugar production in Cuba (Azcuba) recognized the “limited scope” of the 93 measures adopted to revive that industry that is going through one of its worst crises, local media reported this Saturday.
“Although the benefits of the measures and their encouragement in sugarcane production are recognized, there is a group of objective and subjective factors that limit their scope,” said the president of Azcuba, Julio García, at the V plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) that has been in session since yesterday in Havana.
The official mentioned, according to the official journal Granmathat these limitations are related “to the completion of the labor force, the creation of conditions to organize the collectives, labor and technological discipline.”
He added that there are also “financial problems and lack of inputs.”
In Cuba, only 41% of the sugarcane planned for this year has been planted
A year ago, during the III Plenum of the Central Committee (CC) of the PCC, these measures were implemented, which included actions aimed at the generation of electricity, the production of cane and its derivatives, as well as provisions on financing, logistics, business management and science. , technology and innovation.
At the partisan meeting this Saturday, the head of the CC Agrifood Department, Félix Duarte, stated that “this harvest will be the smallest we will do in 64 years of Revolution.”
He called then to fulfill the production plan “of just over 450,000 tons (ton), and become a moment to start making the leap in the sector”, according to versiona Granma.
The 2022-2023 harvest started at the end of November with the goal of producing 455,198 tons and with the forecast of grinding 6.5 million tons. Only 23 sugar mills, 13 less than in the previous one, will participate in the current contest, in accordance with the strategy exposed by Azcuba.
The sugar harvest begins in Cuba, with less than half a million tons forecast
In the previous season, 480,000 tons of sugar were produced; 36 plants milled just over six million tons of cane and production was classified as the lowest in the last 100 years of history of this industry in Cuba.
The sugar industry was in other times the economic locomotive of Cuba, but it suffered a drastic drop in production starting in the 1990s with the crisis after the fall of the Soviet bloc.
Between 2009 and 2010, production plummeted to a record 1.1 million tons.
Cuba had 156 operational 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.
