Dear Editor,
I see that our President is seeking help from Cuba for our sugar industry. It’s a most unusual and incompetent thing to do in view of the following:
Wikipedia tells us that “Cuba was once the world’s largest sugar exporter. Until the 1960s, the US received 33% of their sugar imports from Cuba. During the cold war, Cuba’s sugar exports were bought with subsidies from the Soviet Union. After the collapse of this trade arrangement, coinciding with a collapse in sugar prices, two thirds of sugar mills in Cuba closed and 100 000 workers lost their jobs. And the sugar production in the cane sugar mills has fallen from approximately 8 million metric tons to 3.2 million metric tons in the 2015 period. A rise in sugar prices beginning in 2008, stimulated new interest in sugar. Production in 2012-2013 was estimated at 1.6-1.8 million tonnes. 400,000 tonnes is exported to China and 550,000-700,000 for domestic consumption.” In other words they have, like Guyana, become uncompetitive sugar producers at around 22 cents a pound, whilst the world market prices continue to be around 17 cents a pound. In a paper written by Jorge Salazar-Carrillo entitled ‘The Collapse of the Cuban Sugar Industry: An Economic Autopsy’ we are informed that in Cuba dominated by the Soviet dominated Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) “Cuba would provide the majority of the sugar required by the USSR’s member states, with a plan to increase production up to 14 million tons by the beginning of the 1980s. While this goal was never reached, production in 1989 reached 7.58 million tons. However this level of production was predicated on large subsidies of oil and equipment from the Soviet Union. This, coupled with the Soviet style ‘gigantism’ (i.e. huge areas of land under one administration) and large quantities of fertilizer, pesticides, etc. in use, resulted in the Cuban sugar industry becoming highly inefficient. The goal prior to 1989 was simply increased production via any means, rather than seeking to increase it by greater efficiency.” This sounds very familiar to me.
As can be seen from the above table Brazil has increased its production by nearly 105% whilst Cuba has contracted by nearly 40%, since it is, and has been, an industry riddled by political interference, incompetence and a disastrous attempt at mechanisation, a mechanisation which cannot approach the complexity of the Guyana situation.
These people cannot help us, we have to look to Brazil.
I am thoroughly ashamed to be a Guyanese when I can verify these facts in a few minutes whilst my President is standing before the world telling them how progressive the Cuban sugar industry is and he wants their help.
There is nothing we can learn from Cuba which is in the same boat as us, with political interference both from Cuba and the former USSR causing the demise of both industries – ours and theirs.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira
