Something Smells Rotten
in Venezuela
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS (IPS) - Tens of thousands
of tonnes of basic foods rotted in the
last year in shipping containers
belonging to the Venezuelan government.
Fully two-thirds of the food consumed by
Venezuela's 27 million inhabitants is
imported.
"One might think it is carelessness or
negligence. If that is the case, there
should be a sanction, but it could also
be corruption," President Hugo Chávez
said last week as the scandal emerged.
"We will get to the bottom of this
case," he pledged in his weekly Sunday
column.
Some 35,000 tonnes of beef, pork and
chicken, milk and dairy products,
vegetable oil, flour, sugar and salt
were in 1,200 shipping containers found
abandoned in Puerto Cabello, a port 150
kilometres northwest of Caracas.
A similar quantity was found in another
1,100 trucks several months ago in a lot
in Venezuela's central plains.
Food Minister Félix Osorio said Friday
that not all the food is necessarily
expired, and some shipments may be
recovered for human or animal
consumption. Meanwhile, private sources
calculate the losses at more than 70,000
tonnes.
"It's a shame that food is lost as a
result of irresponsible actions of who
knows which officials, when there are so
many people going hungry and searching
from market to market to see if they can
afford to buy everything they need,"
Aminta Sánchez, a nurse who lives with
her daughters and a son- in-law in the
densely populated west side of Caracas,
told IPS.
According to official figures, at least
six percent of Venezuelan population
suffers from malnutrition -- about the
same percentage that the government says
lives in extreme poverty.
The spoiled food was imported by the
government-run PDVAL, a food production
and distribution company, created in
2008 as a subsidiary of the giant PDVSA,
the national oil company, to take
advantage of the latter's power and
structure.
Luis Pulido, president of PDVAL in 2009,
was arrested Tuesday and charged with
corruption as the Attorney General's
Office opened investigations into the
case.
Chávez quickly absolved Energy Minister
and PDVSA president Rafael Ramírez and
ordered him to launch a "counterattack
against the oligarchy," the opposition
elite who he blames for manipulating the
situation, noting that the volume of
food lost "is less than one percent of
the flow of foods that do reach the
people."
Food Minister Osorio noted than in the
seven years this government-run system
has existed, which includes PDVAL and
other networks, it has provided 10.6
million tonnes of food, of which about
seven million tonnes were imported
products.
Together, the Venezuelan government and
private sector import about 8 billion
dollars in food annually. The main
imports are milk, butter, cheese, beef,
chicken, vegetable oils, flour, sugar,
maize and beans, as well as products
that used to be Venezuelan exports, such
as coffee, which now comes from
Nicaragua.
The leading suppliers of food are the
United States, Brazil, Argentina, Chile,
Ecuador, Bolivia and, until political
tensions erupted last year, Colombia.
"Other countries consume meat or whiskey
because they produce them. We consume
them because we have petroleum, which
gives us money to spend on them," said
Natalia Sánchez, director of
sociological and anthropological studies
at the University of Zulia, in western
Venezuela.
The government, which preaches food
security, in the last three years has
intervened in numerous farms of all
sizes and in agro-industrial companies,
both domestic and foreign. It has also
shut down or fined everyone from major
supermarket chains to modest butcher
shops, all to ensure the availability of
inexpensive food.
It has also provided financing to
cooperatives and rural collectives under
government management, established on
formerly private rural estates. In some
sectors, such as soybeans, production
has expanded, but in others, output has
decreased, or fallen far short of the
goals announced at the beginning of the
planting season.
Annualised inflation for food stands at
41 percent, according to the Central
Bank of Venezuela, and although the
government's National Institute of
Statistics says the minimum salary --
about 250 dollars a month -- covers the
basic food basket, trade union
organisations say at least twice that
sum is needed.
For several months each year, there are
shortages in the government's grocery
stores of meat and dairy products, oils,
flour, cereals and sugar. These items
can be found in the informal street
markets, but at twice the price.
In part, the difficulties are related to
the rupture of trade ties with
neighbouring Colombia as a result of
diplomatic and political disputes.
Colombia was a big supplier of meat,
dairy and potatoes.
The Chávez administration has focused
efforts on reaching the low-income
population through 19,000 grocery stores
across the country. Osorio noted that
the system employs 31,000 people and has
the capacity to store 600,000 tonnes of
food in dry and refrigerated facilities.
It also has 61 silos, 34 packing plants
and a fleet of 3,800 vehicles.
"What has occurred is proof of
inefficiency. The management of
containers in a port, for example, is a
complex operation, which requires
experience and expertise that haven't
been developed among the official
entities that began operating last
year," a business leader in Puerto
Cabello, who requested anonymity, told
IPS.
Henrique Salas Feo, a member of the
political opposition and governor of
Carabobo state, where Puerto Cabello is
located, said that "mafias entrenched
with the government have a nice deal,
which begins with obtaining cash at
preferential rates to buy the food,
which then never reaches the people, but
they pay dozens of dollars a day for
each container parked" at the port.
Since 2008, the pro-Chávez,
anti-corruption group AIPO has denounced
in an Internet campaign the "corruption
and influence peddling in PDVAL."
Despite the setback of tonnes of spoiled
food, the government is keeping up its
offensive against private producers or
operators in the food sector.
Chávez has repeatedly threatened to take
over Empresas Polar, Venezuela's largest
private corporate group and the leading
producer of beer, corn flour (used to
make "arepa," a staple bread on
Venezuelan dinner tables), as well as
other grains, fats and a variety of
beverages. |
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