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Cuba was losing money on sugar, says Castro HAVANA: Cuba, a nation once synonymous with sugar, has been losing money on
the crop, said Fidel Castro, the president. His government is turning sugar
plantations into farmland and is negotiating a possible purchase of US sugar.
Speaking late Friday at the close of Havana’s annual trade fair, Castro said
falling sugar prices and rising prices for the oil needed to produce the crop
made it a money-loser. “Imagine how much we would save cutting a smaller
quantity of sugar,” Castro said. “I’d prefer to cut a million and a half
(tons) than 2 million because with that million and a half we could have a
reasonable profit.”
The statements appeared to be Castro’s strongest direct explanation for its
decision last year to close 70 of its nearly 160 sugar mills, transferring tens
of thousands of workers to other tasks.
That decision was not easy in a nation long obsessed with the size of its
annual sugar crop, even if tourism has easily surpassed sugar as an earner of
foreign exchange in recent years.
Castro quoted a famed Cuban saying, “Without sugar, there is no country.”
But he noted that competition from other cane-producing nations, as well as the
growth in corn-based sweeteners, have kept sugar prices low. “Why are we
going to produce sugar, for example, if the prices are on the floor?” he
asked rhetorically. Earlier Friday, the Communist Party daily Granma reported
that Sugar Minister Ulises Rosales del Toro said that more than 1 million
hectares (2.47 million acres) of sugar cane land are being turned over to
production of food or to forestry.
And Cuba’s state import company, Alimport, said it was negotiating a possible
purchase of US sugar turning on its head Cuba’s historic role as a sugar
supplier to the United States.
Wayne Carrick, an international trader for PS International of Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, said the Cubans were talking about purchase of 5,000 to 15,000
tons of sugar, though price and some other issues remained to be settled. He
said a deal might be reached within a few weeks.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Castro’s government sent hundreds of thousands of
urban workers into the fields each year to help bring in the sugar harvest,
which was sold to the Soviet bloc at prices above world market levels.
Production of 6 million to 7 million tons a year was common. The government
tried to hard to produce 10 million tons in 1970 that it disrupted many other
sectors of the economy.
But harvests have been declining over the past decade and the collapse of the
Soviet Union took away the most lucrative market.
In June 2002, Cuba closed 70 mills in a drive for greater efficiency. Harvests
slipped to 3.6 million tons in 2002. No figure has been given for this year,
but most experts say it was less than 2 million. Starved for investment, many
Cuban mills have been using equipment installed in the early 20th century.
Other countries Mexico also have suffered from low sugar prices. Mexico’s
government took over 27 sugar mills in 2001 to help workers who were not being
paid. —APP/AP
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#1 Kuba will Zucker aus den USA KAUFEN !
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Kuba will Zucker aus den USA KAUFEN !
