AMID DEEPENING shortages of food and household supplies, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has ordered the takeover of a Venezuelan unit of US agriculture giant Cargill, the latest in a series of takeovers of foreign-owned companies.
In a speech broadcast on state-run television on Wednesday evening, Mr Chávez also threatened to seize control of privately- owned Polar, the country’s largest food conglomerate and brewer.
The actions come less than three weeks after Mr Chávez won a referendum that will allow him to run an unlimited number of times for the presidency.
“If you want to take on the government, you’ll find out that this revolution is for real,” Mr Chávez said, directing his comments to the family that owns a controlling interest in Polar.
In recent years, Mr Chávez has imposed price controls on many basic food items as part of his socialist transformation of Venezuela’s economy. But consumers and producers have largely learned to bypass those controls via a huge black market.
Government officials said the expropriation was triggered by an inspection of a Cargill-owned Cristal rice plant in the state of Portuguesa, during which officials determined that the company was not producing rice at the regulated price.
Minneapolis-based Cargill is a global food producer and transporter that recorded $120 billion (€95.6 billion) in sales last year.
In recent years, Mr Chávez has seized dairy farms and ranches and given them to worker-run co-operatives to manage. While price controls are designed to help the poor, low-income families suffer through scarcities and long queues at the government-owned Mercal grocery chain, where half of all Venezuelan groceries are sold, some analysts say.
Industry officials have complained that price controls contribute to inflation, while Venezuela has been forced to import chicken, rice, pork sausage, cooking oil and other staples from Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere, as domestic output has declined. – ( LA Times/Washington Postservice)