The Cuban president describes the current sugar campaign as bad

President Cuban, Miguel Diaz-Caneldescribed the current harvest campaign sugar bowl as bad, but stressed that the sector, historical for the country, “cannot disappear”, in a note released by the Presidency this Monday.

Díaz-Canel chaired a meeting with regional leaders of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC, the only legal one) in which progress in the sector was analyzed, among other issues.

The president said that the face of the harvest must be “changed” and that for this it will be necessary to exceed “the planting plan.”

This sector, strategic on the island, is going through a bad time after in 2021 the state-owned company Azcuba described that year’s campaign as “one of the worst in history.”

During the 2020-2021 period, barely 66% of the planned plan of 1.2 million tons was reached. That goal was already much lower than the harvests of decades ago, when they tried to reach 10 million tons.

In addition, last January only 70% of the planned cane was planted, according to the official newspaper Granma.

The Cuban regime has attributed the situation, in part, to “problems of an organizational and disciplinary nature.”

In statements collected by the official press on February 8, Díaz-Canel demanded that “each one locate themselves in what those disciplinary problems are and discuss and combat them.”

In addition, of the 156 power plants operating in Cuba before 1959, only 56 remain, and only 38 of them were milled in last year’s harvest.

The official forecasts for this harvest point to a production of some 911,000 tons from the activity of some thirty factories from December to next April.

According to information offered at the meeting of the National Assembly of People’s Power (unicameral Parliament) last December, the sugar production of this stage is destined mostly for internal consumption -500,000 tons-, while another 411,000 tons are planned for export.