Mr. Juan Andres Pla Gomez was named executive director of the Consejo Estatal del Azucar (CEA) instead of the recently appointed Mr. Dhimas De Moya. A former executive director of the government sugar enterprise said that “the changing of the directors will not solve the very serious problems facing the nationalized sugar industry.”
The sugar growers Federation (FEDOCA) said that “20 days after officially announcing the beginning of the grinding season, the CEA has not produced one grain of sugar. According to the newspaper Hoy, the CEA has used cane that had been lying in the field for five days which had fermented. New sugar cane was thus infected by the old, and the juice produced was “worse than vinegar,” said one of the growers.