SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian builder Odebrecht plans to produce sugar in Cuba, the company said yesterday, as looser restrictions on foreign investment in the communist island raise hopes of a recovery in the once-booming sector after decades of decline.

News of the project came on the day Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff begins a mostly ceremonial official visit to the country, which has been under communist rule since the Fidel Castro-led revolution and an ensuing US trade embargo.
Odebrecht will sign a “contract of productive administration” with Cuba’s state sugar company Grupo de Administracion Empresarial del Azucar to operate the 5 de Septiembre mill in Cienfuegos province on the south coast.

“The agreement for a period of 10 years aims for an incremental increase in the production of sugar and crushing capacity and help with an overhaul” of the sector, Odebrecht said in an email to Reuters through its press office.

The project will finally open the capital-starved Cuban sugar industry to foreign inflows after years of failed attempts by overseas investors to gain a foothold in the sector nationalized several years after the 1959 revolution.

Cuba’s sugar production has fallen from a peak of 8 million tonnes in 1970 to just 1.2 million tonnes in the last harvest.
The country was once the world’s top sugar supplier.