With Chavez Absent, Venezuelan Government Fails to Solve Food Shortages
Some tough economic decisions could solve Venezuela's food shortage problem.
Jan. 28, 2012— -- Ysmary Berti, a history teacher, hasn't been able to buy coffee for more than a week.
"No one can find coffee, toilet paper, napkins or sugar," she gripes at a congested market in downtown Caracas.
"The whole country is up in the air," added Isabella Jimenez, a businesswoman who begrudges the absence of a more visible Chávez administration. "We lack essential items like sugar and flour and who's responsible for the economy?"
Tensions are running higher than usual in Venezuela, on account of the precarious health of president Hugo Chávez, now convalescing in Cuba after a fourth operation for an unspecified form of cancer.
Chávez has not appeared in public since December 10th, and in the meantime shortages of staple consumer items are aggravating the day-to-day life of Venezuelans, who must sometimes cue up outside supermarkets in lines of 100 people or more to acquire goods like sugar, rice, and bags of corn meal, used to make the quintessential arepa.
Some economists in Venezuela argue that the government could take several measures that would help to solve this food shortage problem. But they say that these policies are being delayed by government officials who do not want to make important decisions until Chávez returns.
"With all the current political and institutional problems, economics have been left in the background," said José Luis Saboin, a senior economist at the Caracas think-tank Econanalitica.
Saboin said that the Venezuelan government could help to ease food shortages by devaluating the national currency, the Bolivar. This would increase the amount of currency flowing in the economy and make it easier for retailers to get dollars with which to import food.
The government could also eliminate, or ease, price controls on basic goods, giving local industry a greater incentive to produce more food.
But such measures could prove to be unpopular with the regular citizen, as devaluation would diminish the value of people's personal savings, and lifting price controls would mean that prices for certain goods could temporarily increase.
Saboin said that the Venezuelan government, which is faced with the prospect of another election if Chávez is unable to recover from surgery, is hesitant to make such moves.
In the meantime, the Chávez administration is saying that the business community, with whom it is often at odds, is to blame for the food shortages. "It is a psychological war to demoralize and confuse our people," Vice President Nicolás Maduro said recently.
"Every week business owners are hoarding another item, trying to pit people against the government," claimed Ysmary Berti, the history teacher and Chávez supporter who was struggling to find coffee in Caracas. "But no one will force Chávez out!"
To combat food shortages, the Venezuelan government has launched a nationwide campaign against hoarding and price gouging. According to the administration, as many as 17,000 tons of food have been seized from company inventories across the country since the beginning of the crackdown and are now being redistributed through "supervised sales."
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