Cuba’s Sugar Harvest Comes Up Short
HAVANA TIMES – The national sugar plan corresponding to the 2012-2013 campaign only reached 89 percent, it was learned during the balance of the Azcuba Sugar Group, Granma newspaper reported.
According to the report, 192 000 tons of programmed sugar was not produced due to problems with the agro industrial efficiency, failing to mill the volume of cane planned and due to the impact of Hurricane Sandy in several eastern provinces.
Only three provinces across the country managed to reach their production targets, and although some sugar companies posted losses, the economic results were evaluated as “favorable” due to the quality of the sugar produced.
A fact even Raul Castro admitted:
“The Revolution cannot lie,” he said in comments published by the Communist party newspaper Granma. “This isn’t saying that there have been comrades who have lied, but the imprecision, inexact data, consciously or unconsciously masked, can no longer continue.”
See: “Raul Castro gives a taste of his `frank’ style – Taipei Times” – http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/12/25/2003341898
That title should be: “Cuba’s sugar harvest comes up short again”.
Since the Castro regime took control of the industry the seeds of its destruction were there. the rampant expansion of sugar to achieve the “ten million ton” zafra resulted in a loss of large areas of land to food production. Land that wasn’t suited for sugar especially in the mono-culture way the regime wanted to produce. The un-ecological management of the land resulted in a high dependency on imported fertilizers. The Russian machinery was second rate and wasteful.
Fidel Castro even shut down part of the industry to send people to the sugar fields thereby destroying massive economic value for his prestige pipe dream.
When the Soviet subsidies – both in handouts and exaggerated purchase prices – ended, the sugar industry collapsed. The regime had no response. Yields plummeted, costs soared. Unable to come up with a creative solution at the time, the regime started shutting down the industry devastating the countryside and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Cubans in the process. Cuba was even reduced to importing sugar from Belarus. Creative solutions appeared only later, when need overcame dogma. Foreign investment (Brazil) and the use of sugar waster to produce energy are no starting up in a small scale. New machinery came from Brazil. Management expertise came from foreign investors. Still the bulk of the industry is under-performing. The regime has always failed to understand that nature does not obey their plan.
The legacy of the criminal dogmatic mismanagement is felt by Cubans every day: shortages in food and high prices for food. Before the Castro regime Cuba was a net exporter of food. Now the regime needs to import 80% of the food the Cuban people consume. Ironically lots of the food comes from the USA. Cuba depends on its archenemy for food. The Cuban people also depend on their relatives in the USA that send the bulk of the 5 billion dollars in remittances that help them to survive.
You know that the drop is even worse than “reported”! The Castro oligarchy is infamous for twisting and outright lie on Cuba’s economic numbers!