For the third consecutive year Cuba's reorganised sugar industry is failing to perform up to expectations, increasing pressure on the government to open up the once proud sector to foreign investment. Already one mill, the first since the industry was nationalised soon after the 1959 revolution, is under foreign management, with at least seven others on the auction block.
AZCUBA, the state-run holding company that replaced the Sugar Ministry three years ago, announced plans to produce 1.8 million tonnes of raw sugar this season, 18 percent more than last season's 1.6 million tonnes. But the harvest is 20 percent behind schedule, sugar reporter Juan Varela Perez wrote recently in Granma, the Communist Party daily. "Continuous and heavy rainfall in almost all provinces of the country has affected the harvest since January," state-run Radio Rebelde said late last week, reporting on a meeting of AZCUBA executives at the end of February.
"To this has been added the habitual problems of inputs arriving late, disorganisation and the poor quality and slowness of repairs," the report said. Sugar was once Cuba's leading export, both before the revolution and afterward, when the former Soviet Union bought Cuban sugar at guaranteed prices. Today it is Cuba's seventh largest earner of foreign currency, behind services, remittances, tourism, nickel, pharmaceuticals, and cigars.
"These days it is a true odyssey to go through a harvest. The mills need more profound repairs, but that costs millions upon millions of dollars," Manuel Osorio, a mill worker in eastern Granma province, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "So they do some superficial repairs and start grinding and immediately the problems begin and this year to top it off it is hot and raining almost every day. The cane needs cool and dry weather to mature. If not, it is like milling weeds."
The sugar harvest begins in December with the "winter" season and runs into May, with January through March the key months as dry and cool weather increases yields, but not this year. "I can't remember a wetter winter and it is almost impossible to harvest," sugarcane cutter Arnaldo Hernandez said in a telephone interview from eastern Holguin province.
