Cuba opens sugar sector to foreign management

[flamingdem]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/07/us-cuba-sugar-brazil-idUSBRE8A61TI20121107



(Reuters) - Brazilian builder Odebrecht SA ODBES.UL will begin administrating a Cuban sugar mill next week in the first sign the industry is ready to accept foreign participation since the 1959 revolution, two company sources said on Wednesday.

Odebrecht subsidiary, Compañía de Obras en Infraestructura (COI), is expected to sign the agreement with state-run sugar monopoly AZCUBA on Friday, according to the company sources and two diplomatic sources.

COI has been working in Cuba for a number of years building new port facilities at Mariel Bay, just west of Havana.

"Under the agreement we will manage the mill for 13 years, upgrade it and bring in new machinery for the harvest and cane transportation," said one of the Odebrecht sources, who is an executive involved in the project.

"We start next week for this harvest that begins in December," he said.

More than 170 million metric tonnes of sugar were produced worldwide in 2011. Cuba accounted for 1.4 million tonnes, or less than one percent.

Talks between potential sugar investors and the government have come and gone for years with few results.

At least three other companies are negotiating management agreements, according to two different company representatives.

Foreign capital and management know-how could help to revive a sugar industry that has collapsed from neglect and lack of investment in mills and plantations.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Terrific. Looking forward to news on how this developes. Thanks. n/t

[joshcryer]

2. Already started privitizing land development, too.

[naaman fletcher]

3. the castros destroyed the cuban sugar industry

They utterly destroyed it. At the time of the revolution Cuba was the leading player. Now its a bit player. Lets hope the Brazillians can bring it back.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Dwight Eisenhower destroyed the sugar mega-trade with Cuba in 1960.

At one time the U.S. was controlling and purchasing 82% of Cuba's sugar. Before that, Spain, until the U.S. terminated their connection with Cuba.

That all was terminated in 1960. At some point Russia took up slack by buying vast amounts of Cuban sugar. When the U.S. re-aligned with Russia, Russia was forced to break off all support to Cuba as a condition of the new truce. That was some time ago.

The revolution was the PEOPLE'S revolution, not the Castro Revolution, as you very well would know if you'd bothered to inform yourself by remembering what you'd been taught, or discovered through reading.

[naaman fletcher]

7. I am informed

Cuban sugar production, once the most efficient in the world, stagnated under the Castros and output has fallen dramatically. That's a fact.

[joshcryer]

8. Russia lost the Eastern bloc, they couldn't afford to keep old trade relations.

Cuba insisted on fixed pricing and it was hurting the Russians, so they redid the trade protocol.

The Eastern bloc is now the most affluent part of the former USSR because the people rose up before the dissolution and weren't robbed blind by the oligarchs (the Eastern bloc arguably kept the USSR going). Castro shouldn't ever be forgiven for his support of the suppression of the Prague Spring, but he knew that if the USSR could not maintain its occupation of Czechoslovakia and the Velvet Revolution years later (along with the general fall of the Eastern Bloc) it would prove disastrous to their alliance with the USSR.

It remains a fact that sugar production failed hard under Castro.

I personally don't have a problem with it because cash cropping is an intrinsic aspect of globalization.

And it's a damn shame Cuba is returning to it. And disgusting that it is being cheered here.

[ocpagu]

4. Great news!

There's so much potential in Cuba.

[flamingdem]

5. And we're handing that potential to other countries

such as Brazil, China and Russia.

Obama MUST stop being scared of Republican Cuban Americans since this time for the first time the CA vote was greater for dems than pubs