The 2023-2024 harvest has just begun in Cuba, but the ruling party cannot hide that, once again, it will end in debacle. None of the Ciego de Ávila plants, for example, has begun to grind. on a note published this Friday, the newspaper Invader He says that the delay is due to “different inconveniences”, without giving details, but assures that “compliance with the economic-productive indicators of the territory is in danger.”
At the end of November, the official press announced that of the 25 centers that would work In the current campaign, only two –Ciro Redondo, in Ciego de Ávila, and 10 de Noviembre, in Artemisa–, due to repairs, would begin grinding late, on January 10, the first, and in February, the second. The rest would do it in December. But this has not been fulfilled.
In Sancti Spíritus, according to an extensive note published on wednesday by Escambrayhad “an unstable start,” in the words of Antonio Viamontes Perdomo, director of the Melanio Hernández center, where, they say, the group “works magic to fulfill the plan.”
The Melanio Hernández power plant started six days later than planned, on December 26, but two days later it stopped due to the “cold” weather brought by the rains.
The factory started six days later than planned, on December 26, but, two days later, it was stopped due to the “cold” brought by the rains. After resuming work on January 2, it was only operational for four days, as “it had to stop again to fix a crack in the boiler supply pipes.”
Viamontes Perdomo recounted his string of problems to the provincial newspaper: “When you stop for many hours everything becomes complicated because the industrial process has sugary materials that have their own times and conditions; we do not yet have the bagasse to provide all the necessary steam; there is humidity in the fields; there are 13 combine harvesters missing that have not been incorporated due to lack of oil and those that are working suffer breakages. For all this it is very difficult to talk about concrete data of industrial efficiency, but the workers do what is necessary to stabilize the harvest.”
The text of Escambray Remember that this year only 40% of the planned cane has been planted (803 hectares of the 2,020 announced). Despite this, the note ends optimistically: “What starts unstable does not always end badly.”
Las Tunas, for its part, is also late. As reported by the ruling party, in this eastern province the Antonio Guiteras power plant has not yet started, which awaits in the coming days the visit of “a commission designated to accredit the readiness of the system and begin grinding.”
In the same territory, it was not until last Sunday that the Majibacoa power plant started, in which it is planned to produce 61,500 tons of sugar. As if that were not enough, in the first days only 66% of the factory’s capacity was milled, according to its director, David Puig Brito, who also noted “an interruption as a result of failures in the boiler feed pump.” .
Las Tunas is also late. The central Antonio Guiteras has not yet started, and he expects a visit from “a commission designated to accredit the readiness of the system and begin grinding” in the coming days.
“Terrible to start the harvest so late and to make matters worse with cane from Puerto Padre, Menéndez and Yara (Granma),” a local source tells this newspaper. “With the rod shot from so far away, the performance drops a lot.”
In Villa Clara, reports Vanguard, the harvest has begun “in difficult conditions, with material limitations and organizational deficiencies.” In a note published this Thursday, the official newspaper reported on the journey of the first secretary of the Communist Party in the province, Osnay Miguel Colina, through the three Villa Clara power plants that are working, where he noted these “deficiencies” and, with the usual voluntarism in The senior officials of the regime, “emphasized the need to have an efficient harvest, despite resource limitations and the delay in milling, given the late start of the three mills due to lack of inputs.”
What is happening and will happen with sugar this season, however, is no surprise. Already in September, the authorities of Sancti Spíritus predicted an even worse harvest than the previous year, because hardly any cane had been planted for grinding. In June, in that province, only 30% of the harvest plan of the more than 50,000 hectares available had been completed.
In 2022-2023 the harvest reached only 350,000 tons, according to an official report at the time, compared to 473,720 in 2021-2022, which had been a catastrophe. The result of that campaign barely exceeded half of what was planned – 911,000 tons – and was not enough to cover domestic demand, which was around half a million, or for export commitments, of 411,000 tons.
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