Cuba has begun a top-level review of its once-powerful sugar industry after a 2002 restructuring failed to halt its decline and improve efficiency, industry sources and foreign traders said this week. "There is no doubt more mills will be closed," a local industry insider said. This year's estimated output of 1.3 million tonnes of raw sugar was the lowest since 1908 and has forced the country to import sugar to meet contracts and cover its 700,000 tonne domestic consumption.
"Cuba will never live off sugar again. That belongs to the era of slavery," Cuban President Fidel Castro said in a recent speech on the economy. "This country's means of support is now its source of ruin," he said.
The Communist-run Caribbean country shut down 71 of 156 mills and relegated 60 percent of sugar cane plantation lands to other uses in the 2002 restructuring.
At the time, the ministry said: "We can produce 4 million tonnes with 38 percent of the land now dedicated to cane, if we grow 54 tonnes per hectare and obtain yields of 12 percent."
Twenty-three of the remaining mills remained closed this season, and cane output was less than 30 tonnes per hectare due mainly to drought conditions.
Local experts said many of the mills would remain closed next year as output would still fall well short of 2 million tonnes, compared with 2.52 million tonnes in 2003.
They said general neglect of the state-run industry was the underlying reason for its precipitous decline.
"There are mills that life has demonstrated practically have nothing to do with sugar production," Juan Varela Perez, Cuba's top sugar reporter and virtual voice of the Sugar Ministry, said during a recent daily radio spot.
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