Plans to create the new sugar corporation and revitalize the industry by, among other things, allowing foreign investment and closing inefficient sugar mills are nearing final approval by President Raul Castro, said the sources, who know the industry well and asked not to be identified.
The ministry’s upcoming demise appears to be the last chapter in the dramatic decline of the sugar industry in a Caribbean island country where sugar was once king but now accounts for less than 5 per cent of foreign exchange earnings.
This latest move is similar to other agricultural reforms under Castro, who replaced older brother Fidel Castro in 2008 and is trying to increase food output by loosening the communist-led government’s control over farming.
Cuba’s fall from once being the world’s biggest sugar exporter, producing 8 million tonnes of raw sugar annually, began with the collapse of former benefactor the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, the sector has declined relentlessly and output is expected to be only 1.2 million tonnes this harvest.
But with the upcoming reorganization, “in the medium-term they hope to increase production to 2.8 million tonnes using fewer mills,” a Cuban source with intimate knowledge of the sugar industry said.
“Yields per hectare are currently around 3 tonnes per hectare and the goal is to bring them up to at least 6 tonnes,” he added.
The international standard is 8 tonnes per hectare (2.47acres).
Cuba itself consumes a minimum 700,000 tonnes of sugar annually.
