Havana, Nov 11 (EFE) One of the major ills of Cuba’s state-run agricultural enterprises is ‘the excess of non-productive personnel’, Communist Party daily Granma reported.

The newspaper estimated the number of redundant employees in the state farming sector at 89,000, or 26 percent of the total.

‘The urgency to increase production of food and reduce imports has accelerated the solution of this old programme, which engenders bureaucracy, raises costs, hampers productivity, creates disorder and prevents the worker from improving his income,’ Granma said Tuesday.

Among the measures adopted by the agriculture ministry is setting the goal of eliminating at least 10 percent of the superfluous jobs and halving the number of managers, the daily said.

Since 2007, the government has closed 83 state agricultural enterprises and re-organised 473 work units.

President Raul Castro, who took the reins in July 2006 after older brother Fidel was stricken with a severe illness, has repeatedly complained about Cuba’s poor agricultural productivity, noting that half the island’s arable land is sitting unused.

Raul said earlier this year that the ‘maximum priority’ is increasing domestic farm production, given rising international prices and Cuba’s reliance on imports for more than 80 percent of the food consumed by the island’s 11.2 million residents.

The government has already reduced the amount of food that Cubans receive at subsidised prices via their ration cards.

Cuba is suffering one of its worst economic crises since the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in January 1959.

The world economic slump has squeezed Cuba’s two main sources of hard currency: nickel exports and tourism, while Cuban families have experienced a decline in remittances from relatives in the United States.