``The completion of the country's sugar plan, more than an economic act, is a message of revolutionary encouragement for all of our people,'' Vice President Carlos Lage said in comments carried in Tuesday's edition of the Communist Party daily Granma.
Lage, the architect of most economic reforms made over the past decade, said this year's harvest produced 3.9 million tons.
He noted that the harvest was 400,000 tons higher than the previous one -- which netted 3.5 million tons -- and that workers labored more efficiently.
The harvest figures are ``a good example of signs of recovery'' in the industry, Minister of Sugar Ulises Rosales del Toro told government television.
For centuries, sugar was Cuba's primary source of income and the nation's economic health was based almost exclusively on the size and quality of the annual harvest.
But that changed in the early 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba suddenly lost more than 40 percent of the aid and trade it had long counted on from communist allies in Europe.
Cuba was forced to seek other sources of hard currency to buy petroleum and other staples. It focused on tourism, which has burgeoned over the past decade to become Cuba's most important source of foreign cash that can be used on world markets.
Sugar is no longer as crucial as it once was, but remains important. Over the past few years, Cuban authorities have revamped the industry, shutting down inefficient refining plants.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press