Socialist paradise where the black market rules

[naaman fletcher]

The truth is that President Chavez is discovering - as have many other socialist leaders before him -that the laws of economics do not disappear simply because one chooses to ignore them.

....................

like former communist administrations in Eastern Europe, the Venezuelan government has fixed the prices of products such as sugar, milk, and maize meal at below-cost levels.

Inevitably, this has led to severe shortages of these products on the supermarket shelves, a booming black market on which excessive prices are charged - and Venezuela, which formerly produced export surpluses of these products, has had to start importing them.

..........................

Electricity generation was nationalised in 2007 and it took only three years for power outages to start occurring and for rationing to be imposed.

............................

The state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, was placed under direct government control in 2003. Since then, production has dropped by 20%-25% and industrial accidents have multiplied. There are now petrol shortages in Venezuela, the country with the fifth-largest oil reserves.

...............................

http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/letters/article429955.ece/Socialist-paradise-where-the-black-market-rules

[ChangoLoa]

1. Thanks for the article but some corrections

The power outages started in 2008.

The oil production didn't drop by 20-25%. It was like that initially, in 2003-2004, but then the production slowly came back to the pre-strike levels. We can verify it in the imports and fiscal revenues data. Also, I didn't know about the petrol shortages, that sounds really strange... maybe they were talking about the situation in Tachira? If so, it would be a very manipulative argument. Finally, the oil reserves seem to be widely underestimated.

Is Times live a South African newspaper?