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Venezuela's Chavez threatens new nationalizations
AFP
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com 02 15 06Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday threatened to nationalize food distribution industries, alleging that they were charging artificially high prices for basic foods.
"I have sent messages to producers, slaughterhouse intermediaries, warehouses and shops. But if they insist on violating the interests of the people, the constitution and laws, I will take away the warehouses, the shops, I will take away the supermarkets and I'll nationalize them," Chavez warned in an address.
"We are going to be talking government-to-people, so prepare yourselves for that," Chavez added.
In recent months basic goods such as sugar, pasteurized whole milk and meat have been in short supply in supermarkets. Producers say that price controls have left them unable to make their businesses profitable.
The government recently eliminated the value added tax on basic goods and announced subsidies for producers.
But Chavez's government also has seized goods from people deemed to be hoarding particular products, presumably to drive up prices, and then sold them at low-cost Mercal markets and at makeshift distribution centers near the Miraflores presidential palace.
Following Chavez's reelection in December, the legislature gave him sweeping powers to govern by decree for 18 months, which he vowed to use to nationalize utilities and give a state-owned company majority stakes in oil operations.
Chavez, the only close ally of communist Cuba in the Americas, and US officials have exchanged verbal fire for years.
While Chavez has called US President George W. Bush the devil and a war criminal, the United States has accused him of being a destabilizing force in Latin America.
ts/mdl/pmh
AFP 14 2146 GMT 02 07
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