© Reuters. Bottles of Havana Club rum are seen at the production line at the Havana Club Distillery in San Jose de las Lajas, Cuba, May 12, 2015. Picture taken May 12, 2015. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghin/File Photo
By Marc Frank
HAVANA (Reuters) – Producers of Cuba’s famous rum are feeling the pinch with local sugar output forecast to remain at record lows this season amid a grueling economic crisis which has dramatically reduced supplies of fertiliser, fuel and other inputs needed to grow cane.
The first of 25 state-owned sugar mills is set to crank up its machinery in the coming days with plans published in seven of 13 sugar-producing provinces pointing to similar output to last season’s 350,000 metric tons of raw sugar, down from 1.3 million in 2019.
Cuba produced 8 million metric tons of raw sugar in 1989, before the collapse of former benefactor the Soviet Union led to a steady decline.
“In recent years sugarcane production has decreased and we have to reverse this, because we not only lose sugar but also all its derivatives, including rum,” Cuban Vice President Salvador Valdes Mesa said at the close of the last harvest in June.
Christian Barre, director of…
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