Cuba all set for another bumper sugarcane crop
HAVANA 25 APRIL CUBA'S ’99-00 sugar harvest has already surpassed last season's bumper crop of 3.78m tonnes and is fast approaching this year's planned target, which will be well over 4m tonnes, state news media said here on Monday. The Cuban news agency, Prensa Latina has quoted sugar minister Ulises Rosales del Toro as saying in south-eastern Cuba that the previous year’s 3.78m tonnes mark was achieved last Friday itself. Mr Rosales said he expected that the communist-ruled Caribbean island's ’ 99-00 official sugar production plan could be completed in time for May 1, Labour Day. In keeping with a policy of official discretion over the strategic sugar crop, he did not actually go on to specify the target plan of the country, but news agency Prensa Latina said it aimed at "not less than 4m tonnes”. Mr Rosales said the industry had hoped to complete this season's scheduled output programme early, but a spate of rains last week had delayed harvest operations by five to six days. The island had available mature cane still in the fields, and so, weather permitting, harvesting would continue to go on even after the official target figure had been completed. Despite prevailing low world prices, Cubans officials say the recession-hit Cuban sugar industry, which fell into serious decline after the collapse in ’90 of the island's trade and aid ties with the former powerful Soviet bloc, is showing advances in terms of efficiency and lower costs. Nevertheless, Mr Rosales said there was still room for improving the harvest grinding levels of the island's mills. Cuban officials have said they are confident the ’99-00 crop can increase by at least 300,000 tonnes over last year. If this forecast proves to be correct, it will lift Cuba's raw sugar output over 4m tonnes for the first time in about three years. But the major black spot for the Cuban industry is low world prices, which is why the sugar ministry has been emphasising the need for greater efficiency just as much as increased production. Whatever the final production figures for the ’99-00 harvest, it will still be a far cry from the 7 and 8m harvests achieved in the industry's heyday of previous decades. — Reuters
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