HAVANA - The Cuban sugar industry has shut its last mill and tallied lower output at 1.6 million metric tons of raw sugar, sources close to the industry said this week, compared with 1.9 million metric tons in the previous harvest.
AZCUBA, the state-run sugar monopoly, has remained mum on the harvest since April when it reported output was well behind schedule due mainly to unusually low cane yields.
Just two of thirteen sugar-producing provinces reported meeting their plans.
"It was a bit under 1.6 million metric tons," said one source who talked with AZCUBA executives and requested anonymity, confirming Reuters' estimate based on scattered provincial media reports.
Another source, who has access to industry data and also did not want to be identified, confirmed the harvest ended at around 1.6 million metric tons.
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"Yields were below four metric tons per hectare," he said.
AZCUBA had no immediate comment.
AZCUBA scrapped output growth targets when the harvest began in November due to a severe drought last year but had hoped to equal the 1.9 million metric tons produced during the 2014-2015 season.
Unseasonable rainfall in January set back harvesting of an already drought-stunted crop caused by weather phenomenon El Nino.
The cane never recovered.
Only around 15 percent of Cuban sugar plantations boast irrigation and adequate drainage.
AZCUBA, which was formed six years ago and replaced the Sugar Ministry, was founded with the goal of reversing a long decline in output from 8 million metric tons in 1990 to 1.1 million in 2009. The agency said when it was founded it hoped to produce more than 2.6 million metric tons of raw sugar per year by 2016.
The sugar harvest runs into May and at times early June as the summer heat and rains begin.
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Cuba consumes between 600,000 and 700,000 metric tons of sugar a year and has an agreement to sell China 400,000 metric tons annually.
Sugar was long Cuba's most important industry and export but today ranks eighth in foreign currency earnings, behind services, remittances, tourism, petroleum products, nickel, pharmaceuticals, and tobacco products.
