[Marxism] Manufactured Shortages in Venezuela

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Manufactured Shortages in Venezuela
Posted on November 17th, 2007 by Staff

by Gary Ghirardi

In the latest of private sector pressure on the Bolivarian Government  
of Venezuela another “essential?” commodity has been added to the  
list of shortages; toilet paper.

With each proceeding month of a popular democracy moving forward, to  
amend their new constitution to increase the popular power base, the  
multinationals and industrialists continue their war on the people by  
manufacturing shortages of basic essential goods. First it was milk,  
followed by beans,rice, coffee, eggs, chicken and even sugar, all  
native crops and foods produced in Venezuela. The explanations for  
this in the corporate press were governmental restrictions on  
currency mobility, price controls and rising costs externally. Some  
of this is the case with imported goods but clearly some shortages  
from internal production were directed at Venezuela’s poor, the major  
support base of government, hoping to denigrate the support for the  
reform government and against the price controls instituted by the  
government.

The nations privately held grocery stores, all foreign companies, are  
feeling the pressures of price regulation after runaway markups on a  
hugely U.S. centered import dependency and have protested about  
interference by the government. This has fueled periodic non- 
compliance on pricing and fueled a black market in food. Chávez began  
regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter  
inflation and protect the poor. In the markets in Caracas it is  
common to see food imports at twice to three times the cost of the  
same food products in the U.S. supermarket chains. The shortages are  
even effecting the national food programs like Mission Mercal who  
provide basic food stuffs at half the prices of the national food  
chains.

The same pressures are effecting other governmental reforms as well.  
When the government re-nationalized the electricity company from a  
U.S. based energy giant that controlled 70% of South American energy  
conveyance, the credit card companies eliminated the ability of the  
country’s middle and upper classes to use their card accounts to pay  
the monthly bill.

Rising prices on food and shortages in other countries where  
environmental and fuel prices are being cited would only effect the  
imported goods for Venezuela as gasoline here is the worlds lowest at  
14 cents a gallon. Those private producers in the nation of beans,  
rice, coffee and sugar have refused to produce in line with  
government price controls fueling shortages and in the cases of  
corporate food producers like Polar Corporation have used as their  
form of protest against the government producing manufactured shortages.

The situation has caused the government to fund its own food  
production projects through their popular cooperative programs and  
national processing plants but will require development time to  
accommodate the national need.

With the constitutional reform referendum 14 days away we can expect  
similar tactics and worse in the days ahead and after the inevitable  
passage of these popular reforms by the majority of Venezuelans who  
will benefit from them.

Gary Ghirardi

(Gary Ghirardi lives in Venezuela with his wife. As a former San  
Diegan, he knows many of the OB Rag bloggers.)

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism