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By Pascal Fletcher
HAVANA, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Cuba will have more sugar cane available for
cutting in the upcoming 1998/99 harvest than last season despite a drought
affecting eastern provinces, Sugar Minister General Ulises Rosales del Toro said
Tuesday.
In a generally upbeat assessment of the island's troubled sugar sector,
Rosales del Toro said the expanded reserves were the result of cane areas
deliberately left uncut in the past 1997/98 harvest, increased planting and
improved cultivation of growing new fields.
"There will be more cane this year, in spite of the drought," the
minister told reporters in Havana after opening an exhibition of sugar industry
equipment.
But, following the Cuban government's usual practice of discretion, he
declined to make a public forecast of the size of the coming harvest, saying
that detailed estimates of the amount of cane standing in the fields still had
to be made.
He did say, however, that while an increase was definitely expected over
this year's disappointing harvest, it would be less than originally hoped.
Senior Cuban officials have up to now estimated the completed 1997/98
harvest at around 3.2 million tonnes, one of the lowest Cuban sugar crops in the
last 50 years and well below last year's harvest of 4.25 million tonnes.
Asked whether 3.2 million tonnes was really the final official figure for
1997/98, Rosales del Toro declined to comment. At least one foreign visitor was
told by a senior Cuban Sugar Ministry official this month that this year's
harvest barely reached 3 million tonnes.
This lower than expected result, combined with the news of a severe drought
ravaging food and export crops in five eastern provinces, at least two of them
major cane producers, has raised doubts among analysts about just how much of a
harvest increase Cuba can achieve in the 1998/99 season.
Most analysts believe the communist-ruled island will be very hard pressed
to lift production back to 4 million tonnes, which would still only be around
half of the ouput levels it was achieving in the 1980s.
Asked whether Cuba had been able to secure adequate foreign financing for
this year's harvest, Rosales del Toro said the financing situation was "always
very tense".
Without giving details, he added: "But (financing) always appears, we
always dig up something".
The willingnes of foreign banks and trade houses to finance Cuba's sugar
sector in the last few years has been hit by hostile U.S. legislation targeting
foreign investors on the island and investor disappointment over declining
production and returns in the Cuban sugar industry.
Rosales del Toro said the Sugar Ministry would this year follow the same
policy as last season of not allowing manifestly inefficient sugar mills to
operate. Between 30 and 40 mills out of a total of 156 did not operate in
1997/98.
Asked whether Cuba planned to restructure and modernize its sugar industry
and its aging and under-capitalized sugar mills, the minister replied: "Our
problem is not the mills, it's the cane".
He claimed that Cuban sugar mills were not technologically much different
from those of other producers like Australia.
He insisted: "The name of our problem is cane and we're working to
resolve that".
Senior Cuban leaders have said the government aims to try to raise sugar
production back to around 7 million tonnes in the next five years.
19:26 09-15-98
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