Havana/Twenty tons of charcoal ready for export are stored in Maisí, the easternmost municipality of Cuba. The chronic lack of fuel on the Island has prevented the product from moving, Alberto Fernández Marzo, director of the Maisí Agroforestry Company, reported to the provincial media this Monday. we will win.
The product, which is in the Río Seco warehouses and for which there is no estimated date for its shipment abroad, is equivalent to more than a quarter of what was produced in the year in the municipality, 70 tons, for local consumption and which, so far, is “below the plan and insufficient given the high demand for the assortment by the population,” the media points out. The note also indicates that, despite there being no way to transport the coal for sale abroad, it is intended to produce another 20 tons for the same purpose.
Despite the “very strong pressure from Havana” to produce coal for export, as he said last october an employee of the administrative area of a department of the Ministry of Agriculture in Sancti Spíritus told this newspaper, the crisis is taking its toll on the sector. Even so, the official indicated, the order from the capital is clear, since “there are agreements with foreign hotel companies in the tourist centers.”
The order from the capital is clear, since “there are agreements with foreign hotel companies in the tourist centers”
For this reason, “four specialized brigades” are organized in Maisí. There, the coal workers sleep in tents, work from Monday to Friday and rest Saturday and Sunday. “This has allowed them to achieve greater efficiency and productivity,” says Fernández Marzo, who adds, optimistically, that thanks to this way of working, production has begun to “recover,” in addition to the fact that the employees “are better served and have been equipped with chainsaws” to work with uvilla, lily and charcoal wood.
“We reached an agreement with the producers, to pay them 12 pesos per kilogram. Hence, the coal workers’ income ranges from 12,000 pesos for a one-ton oven (about 50 bags), which is the size of a medium oven. If they make two ovens a month, then their income would be about 24,000 pesos,” says the official, who adds that part of the pact with the workers implies that they would also benefit.in currency” once the product is exported.
When those tons are sold, producers could earn 38 cents of every dollar that enters the country from those exports in foreign currency. Of the rest, 30 cents go to the central financing account, and 32 go to the state company that markets it.
The salary for the production of one of the most profitable items for the Cuban State is attractive when compared to that of other goods, because demand “has skyrocketed” in recent months, due, above all, to the instability of electricity and the lack of liquefied gas, he points out. we will win. Hence the need to increase production in all municipalities and also sales.
Increased consumption and the recent application of new regulations – with greater controls –, which causes more doubts than certainties, have caused the bag of charcoal to exceed 2,000 pesos in provinces such as Sancti Spíritus, more than double the 900 it was last September.
The bag of charcoal exceeds 2,000 pesos in provinces like Sancti Spíritus, more than double the 900 it was last September
The Resolution 25/2025 of the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP), approved last April and announced as an opportunity to improve the lives of charcoal producers, has left producers dissatisfied. The measure promised that it would “increase and control foreign currency earnings” from the export of this product, but when the payment to the charcoal maker is made to an account in foreign currency, he does not have the possibility of making transfers from it or withdrawing cash in dollars.
This dissatisfaction in the sector has caused many coal producers not to sell the product to the State and would explain the drop in production that has been evident for several years. Although there is no updated national export data, Cuba produced 39,400 tons of charcoal in 2022, less than half than two years before, when it achieved 75,600, in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic.
As for the largest importers of charcoal extracted from marabou, an article published in Granma Last year it reported that Agroforestal Matanzas paid around 200 MLC (freely convertible currency) for each ton of charcoal, equivalent then to 172 dollars. This same product is sold in the US for about 400 dollars and, in the case of the premium, for almost 490 in Spain, where a recently created company – Entre Brasas – imports it from the port of Santiago de Cuba to Vigo, in Galicia.
