Economy & Business - March 2010 (ISSN 1741-7430)

On 15 March the government announced the closure of at least 100 agricultural companies and the 'reassignment' of their 40,000 employees.
 
Authorities said that it was closing the companies because they were inefficient. The announcement appeared in the communist party newspaper, Granma, and cited a statement from Ulises Rosales del Toro, the former general who was given the job of modernising the sugar industry but presided over a collapse in sugar production. Rosales del Toro is now the minister of agriculture, a senior member of the politburo and a vice president. He made the announcement at a meeting of the Asociación Nacional de Pequeños Campesinos in the central province of Villa Clara.