The government will dismiss the president of Azcuba, Julio Garcia Perez due to the “bad results” of the harvest girlrevealed to CyberCuba a source close to Prime Minister Manuel Marrero, who requested anonymity.
“We will have to buy sugar on the international market, which is expensive, to satisfy domestic demand,” lamented the official.
The call harvest girl It runs in Cuba, between the start of milling (October-November) and January, which, traditionally, was a good time in terms of sugar yield per horse planted; and the current one started on November 25 in the Cienfuegos mill July 14.
“Not all the responsibility for the bad results rests with our partner Julio Andrés, but the small harvest It has been one of the worst and we must renew it,” said the source, who refused to provide the figure for sugar produced in these months or to name a possible replacement.
On the Azcuba website it continues to appear garcia perez as president of the entity, accompanied by Jose Carlos Santos Ferreras first vice-president and the vice-holders Didier Estevez Guerrero Y Noel Casañas Lugo.
Before being named president of Azcuba, Julio Andres Garcia Perez He was First Deputy Minister of Agriculture and had accumulated 25 years of experience in the agricultural sector, according to information provided by the government.
An engineer from Azcuba acknowledged that the replacement of the president has been “discussed in recent days,” but warned that “we will no longer be able, in a long time, to have a profitable harvest, due to the gradual destruction of sugar mills, decapitalization, and emigration of a significant number of specialists and sugar workers, and for the notable loss in quality of the vines and non-compliance in planting”.
In November, Azcuba estimated compliance with sugarcane planting plans at 41% and announced that it would not continue planting the remaining areas because the rainy season had passed and there was a risk of losing the caballerías pending planting.
The lack of fuel or its late arrival, machinery exploitation problems, low technical availability of the equipment, or the shortage of fertilizers and herbicides, influenced the results of the spring campaign and the current cold one, assured an official from Azcuba, who lamented the lack of motivation of the workers and the gradual loss of the labor force.
The Cuban government recognized, at the beginning of the harvest, that it would be even smaller than the previous one and set the goal for the current campaign at 455,200 tons of sugar; which he predicted as “more efficient” and oriented towards the production of derivatives; but his forecasts seem to be broken because he announced the “protection” of the quota rationed by the Bookclarifying that it cannot guarantee punctuality in the delivery or that it is only refining.
Azcuba defines the sugar industry on its website as a strategic sector of the economy; capable of sustaining its own development, ability to provide electricity, security of exporting all the sugar and honey it produces, being a source of employment in rural areas and being the fundamental economic activity of 50 municipalities.
Its priority objective, says the website, is to ensure the sustainability of the growth of the production of cane, sugar and its derivatives until the year 2024 and increase the use of sugarcane biomass as fuel; to help modify the energy matrix; commissioning 18 of the 25 projected bioelectric plants.
In October, the Cuban government dismissed the Minister of Energy and Mines and the director of the UNE; while, in the spring of 2021, changed the head of Agriculture; but the new managers still do not comply with the official plans.
