ashley snyder/february 28, 2008/9:22pm/food scarcity
Returning to my previous post about Venezuela's food hording problems, this past week President Hugo Chavez said that Polar Foods is a prime example of companies witholding food, and will be taken under control of the government if evidence is sufficient.
On one hand this seems like the president is looking for any reason to take Polar under control, due to the past 70 inspections showing no signs of food hording, and the fact that Polar does not produce foods that are in scarcity such as milk, chicken, meats, sugar, coffee, and eggs.
Critics of the way the government is handling this shortage say that the government is toying with chaos, and that if the private sector was left alone things would work out. As food prices flucuate due to shortages, the government is raising prices of staple foods such as rice, which prevents countries such as Chile from making deliveries to Venezuela.
On top of all of this the government is having to monitor over 6000 businesses to make sure food is not being smuggled to Colombia.
The situation with the Government trying to prevent hording and smuggling of food to Colombia is still going on, and the President is starting to single out single companies. While some say this is necessary, some think that the government is toying around with a disasterous situation. Ill let you know more as it develops.
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3182
3 comments:
I think this situation of hoarding food is outrageous. There are so many starving people in the world with hardly any hope to find food. The only staple food most people have is a starch whichs gives them no protein, prolonging their malnutrition. And usually people turn to their government for help but in this case the officials aren't lending a hand. They should go ahead and take over the business and stop feeding their people lies.
This is so silly! Why does the government want to get this Polar company in trouble so bad?!! I think if the past SEVENTY inspections proved that they were not hoarding food, then they're probably NOT. They need to move on.
The concept that the private market will fix everything is preposterous. Every government has regulations on food. The US government pays farmers to destroy crops in order to keep prices level. We'll see what happens. It might be able to work out.
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