Crisis in Cuba: the regime recognized a significant deficit in the sugar harvest due to the lack of resources and labor

the state group Azcuba acknowledged on Monday that the current sugar harvest campaign brings back a deficit of 95,000 tonnes -out of a total of 400,000 planned- for “financial difficulties” and lack of personnel.

As reported Angel Luis Riosgeneral manager of Azcuba’s production line, another of the reasons why the island – which ended its worst campaign in a century last year – is falling short of expectations are the fires in the cane fields and the sugar flights.

Ríos also assured, in statements collected by the official gazette Grandmotherthat sweets have a reduced and aging staff by the “migration effect”. In 2022, more than 313,000 Cubans -about 3% of its total population- emigrated to the United States through its southern border with Mexico.

Various experts have warned of the serious effect that the great migratory exodusespecially the young and the economically active, add to a lively population.

Last Friday, the official press reported that at the end of 2022, the 21.6% of Cubans were over 60 years old.

Apart from the lack of staff, Ríos said the shortfall is also linked to difficulties in accessing parts for centre-backs and inflation.

“The production problems of a factory prevent workers from earning decent wages and many leave,” he assured Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC, the only legal one).

There sugar industry In other times, it was the economic engine of Cuba, but it suffered a drastic drop in production from the 1990s with the crisis after the fall of the Soviet bloc.

In 2009-2010, production fell to a record 1.1 million tonnes.

Cuba had 156 factories in operation in 1959, at the triumph of the revolution, which produced 5.6 million tons of sugar that year.

(With information from EFE)

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