Cuba eyes foreign investment to halt sugar decline

Cuba may open sugar production to foreign investors for the first time since the 1959 revolution as it seeks to reverse the once proud industry’s relentless decline, business sources have told Reuters.

Cuba's sugar cane fields.

Talks between investors and the government have come and gone with little result for years, but what is shaping up as perhaps the island’s worst harvest in a century has increased interest in bringing foreign partners, the sources said.

Their money and management know-how could help revive a sugar industry that has collapsed from neglect and the decapitalization of mills and plantations, local experts and foreign traders said.

President Raul Castro, who took over from ailing brother Fidel Castro two years ago, is trying to right communist Cuba’s cash-strapped economy by increasing exports and cutting imports.

Sugar, once the driver of Cuba’s economy, now accounts for less than 5 percent of Cuba’s foreign earnings, but prices have been driven up by ethanol demand, so Cuba is turning to it once again.

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