Cuba, in Economic Morass, Replaces Four Key Officials

MEXICO CITY —  Cuba’s government, struggling with its worst economic crisis ever, replaced the ministers of agriculture, sugar and communications and the head of the state finance committee.

The sweeping changes in the Communist government’s economic team come as Cuba faces a $450-million shortfall in anticipated sugar revenues this year because of spring storms and a lack of fertilizer, fuel and spare parts once supplied by the now-vanished Soviet Union.

Cuba’s overall economy has plunged by about 50% since 1989.

President Fidel Castro has said Cuba will detour from the Communist path to confront the crisis.

The Politburo of the Communist Party’s Central Committee proposed the changes in the economic team, Prensa Latina, Cuba’s official news service, said Wednesday in a report monitored in Mexico City.

The changes come amid a retooling of Cuba’s government to include younger, more progressive people.

As part of Castro’s swing from communism, Cuba is granting better terms for foreign capitalists, dropping restrictions on visits by Cuban exiles abroad and legalizing possession of foreign currency in hopes of attracting foreign funds.

Cuban officials have promised broader measures in the near future but have not given details.

Alfredo Jordan Morales will head agriculture, Nelson Torres Perez will oversee sugar and Brig. Gen. Silvano Colas Sanchez will be in charge of communications, said Prensa Latina, citing a report from Granma, the official organ of Cuba’s Communist Party. Jose Luis Rodriguez Garcia will take over the state finance committee.

They will replace, respectively, Carlos Perez Leon, Juan Herrera Machado, Manuel Castillo Rabasa and Rodrigo Garcia Leon.

Torres Perez inherits a disaster.

This year’s harvest of sugar, Cuba’s main currency earner, is down about 30% from 1992. Castro said on July 26 that revenue from sugar this year fell $450 million short of predictions, a shortfall nearly equal to all of Cuba’s earnings last year from a growing tourism industry.