Cuba will have to import sugar

Production has fallen sharply in Cuba, and this decline may become permanent.

“This is a disaster. Today, the sugar industry in Cuba is almost non-existent.” Juan Triana of the Center for Cuban Economic Studies did not mince words when he spoke to the BBC about the state of the crop, which was once the center of the island’s economy.

Last season, factories produced 350 thousand tons of sugar, a staggering decline from the 1.3 million tons recorded in 2019. This year may end at an even lower level. According to Reuters, in 1989, when Cuba was the world’s largest sugar exporter, the island nation produced 8 million tons of sugar.

Sugar consumption is 700 thousand tons. Sugar is used in the production of soft drinks and the pharmaceutical industry in Cuba, and is especially important for the production of the famous rum. Now Cuba will have to face a once unimaginable reality – sugar imports.

29 Cuban sugar factories have shut down. About twenty factories are currently operating, but a shortage of fuel and supplies has halted production, leaving workers and their fields in limbo.

Cuba’s sugar industry receives 3% of public investment as the government focuses more on tourism.

The BBC suggests that years of mismanagement and underinvestment have changed the “landscape” of Cuba’s sugar industry, perhaps forever. “For more than 150 years, the sugar cane industry was both the main export earner and the engine of the country’s economy,” says Triana, “Today, the sugar industry in Cuba is almost non-existent.

Tags: sugar, Cuba, imports