HAVANA, Cuba – The coffee industry in Cuba has received the benefits of new international cooperation projects, which are an important complement for state investments, a national expert said today.
The director of coffee, cocoa and coconut at the Agricultural and Forestry Business Group, Elexis Legra, told Prensa latina about the support by Vietnamese specialists with a view to introduce new technologies in eastern Buey Arriba and Tercer Frente territories, in order to increase crop yields.
With a financial support valued at $3 million USD, the initiative will be implemented in a five-year period and should offer solutions for one of the country’s biggest problems: low productivity per hectare, the engineer said.
Among the recent results, Legra mentioned the improvement of the sector in the eastern Tercer Frent municipality, which was supported by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, as of a 1.2 million Euros financing.
This allowed the establishment of 60 technified nurseries for the production of high quality seedling, the purchase of farm tools, the conditioning of transportation equipment and the development of training actions, stated Legra, who attends here the International Agricultural and Forestry Convention, Cuba 2017.
A similar project will be implemented in the eastern region of Guisa, while studies are underway for a larger project that will include several coffee-growing municipalities, including Songo-La Maya, Guama, Sagua de Tanamo, San Luis and Tercer Frente, also with Italy’s collaboration.
The state program will allow increasing exports of about 1,100 tons of gold coffee a year, in these moments, to more than 3,000 tons in 2021; as well as supplying the national market, substituting imports, he summed up.
