MIAMI, United States. — The sugar harvest in Cuba continues without raising its head. This was confirmed on Monday by island authorities, who admitted a deficit of 95,000 tons of sugar in the current campaign.
On this occasion, the difficulties in meeting production —forecasted at more than 400,000 tons of sugar— are due to “financial difficulties” and a shortage of personnel to undertake the necessary tasks in that industry.
Luis Ríos, general director of the Productive Chain of the Azcuba business group, told the newspaper Granma that another of the reasons for the deficit has been the fires in cane fields and the robberies of sugar.
The official indicated that sugar production is also feeling the effects of the massive exodus of Cubans to the United States and other countries. In this sense, he explained that the personnel that work in the harvest “are small and elderly,” which makes it difficult to achieve the goals.
To justify the poor results, Ríos also spoke of “difficulties in accessing parts for the centrals and inflation.”
“The production problems of a plant prevent workers from receiving decent wages and many leave,” the manager assured Granma.
Last year Cuba completed the worst harvest in the last 100 years, and projections for the current one are no better, since around a fifth of it has been compromised.
In November 2022, Julio Pérez García, president of Azcuba, maintained that the idea for the 2022-2023 academic year was to harvest “objective, flexible and, although small, with good practices”, concentrating resources in fewer plants with the aspiration to achieve “greater efficiency”.
However, already in the same month of November, Azcuba had reported that none of the Cuban companies involved in the sugar harvest had complied with the cane planting plan planned up to that moment.
