Rosales del Toro replaces Nelson Torres, who was blamed for the low harvests since 1994 in an industry Cuba relies on to bring in foreign cash.
The move was foreshadowed when the Cuban Communist Party removed Torres from its innermost leadership ring, the 24-member Political Bureau, at its Fifth Congress this month.
Official sources said Torres inherited a raft of complex problems, including a drop in financing by foreign firms, and was unable to achieve satisfactory performance in the latest harvest, which totaled only 4.2 million tons of sugar, well below expectations.
Torres' fate appeared sealed when he clashed publicly with Raul Castro during a session of the Oct. 8-10 party congress, after the defense minister reportedly criticized him harshly for failing to meet production goals.
Rosales del Toro, the new sugar minister, is deputy minister of the armed forces, chief of staff of the army and a member of the Communist Party leadership who holds the title of Hero of the Cuban Republic. He worked closely with Raul Castro on restructuring the army, which has cut back on personnel while taking a highly active role in the Cuban economy, especially agriculture.
The sugar industry, traditionally Cuba's largest source of foreign exchange funds, sank into a severe crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the breakup of the former Communist bloc in eastern Europe, which provided markets and financing.
The 1994-95 harvest hit a low of 3.3 million tons, compared with an average of seven million to eight million tons in the 1980s.
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