Cuba sugar ministry to be shut in reform -sources

Plans to create the new sugar corporation and revitalize  the industry by, among other things, allowing foreign  investment and closing inefficient sugar mills are nearing  final approval by President Raul Castro, said the sources, who  know the industry well and asked not to be identified.

The ministry’s upcoming demise appears to be the last  chapter in the dramatic decline of the sugar industry in a  Caribbean island country where sugar was once king but now  accounts for less than 5 per cent of foreign exchange earnings.

This latest move is similar to other agricultural reforms  under Castro, who replaced older brother Fidel Castro in 2008  and is trying to increase food output by loosening the  communist-led government’s control over farming.

Cuba’s fall from once being the world’s biggest sugar  exporter, producing 8 million tonnes of raw sugar annually,  began with the collapse of former benefactor the Soviet Union  in 1991. Since then, the sector has declined relentlessly and  output is expected to be only 1.2 million tonnes this harvest.

But with the upcoming reorganization, “in the medium-term  they hope to increase production to 2.8 million tonnes using  fewer mills,” a Cuban source with intimate knowledge of the  sugar industry said.

“Yields per hectare are currently around 3 tonnes per  hectare and the goal is to bring them up to at least 6 tonnes,”  he added.

The international standard is 8 tonnes per hectare (2.47acres).

Cuba itself consumes a minimum 700,000 tonnes of sugar  annually.