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CARACAS, Venezuela First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities -- toilet paper.
Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the embattled socialist government says it will import 50 million rolls to boost supplies.
That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday
After years of economic dysfunction, the country has gotten used to shortages of medicines and basic food items like milk and sugar but the scarcity of bathroom tissue has caused unusual alarm. "Even at my age, I've never seen this," said 70-year-old Maria Rojas. She said she had been looking for toilet paper for two weeks when she finally found it at a supermarket in downtown Caracas. Thousands of rolls flew off the store's shelves as consumers streamed in and loaded up shopping carts Thursday morning. "I bought it because it's hard to find," said Maria Perez, walking out with several rolls of paper. "Here there's a shortage of everything - butter, sugar, flour," she said. But the latest shortage is particularly worrisome "because there always used to be toilet paper."
Economists say Venezuela's shortages of some consumer products stem from price controls meant to make basic goods available to the poorest parts of society and the government's controls on foreign currency. President Nicolas Maduro, who was selected by the dying Hugo Chavez to carry on his "Bolivarian revolution," claims that anti-government forces, including the private sector, are causing the shortages in an effort to destabilize the country. The government this week announced it would import 760,000 tons of food and 50 million rolls of toilet paper.
Commerce Minister Alejandro Fleming said "excessive demand" for tissue had built up due to a "media campaign that has been generated to disrupt the country." He said monthly consumption of toilet paper was normally 125 million rolls, but current demand "leads us to think that 40 million more are required." "We will bring in 50 million to show those groups that they won't make us bow down," he said. That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find bathroom supplies. Several supermarkets visited by The Associated Press in the capital on Wednesday and Thursday were out of toilet paper. Those that received fresh batches quickly filled up with shoppers as the word spread. "I've been looking for it for two weeks," Cristina Ramos said at a store on Wednesday. "I was told that they had some here and now I'm in line."
Finance Minister Nelson Merentes said the government was also addressing the lack of foreign currency, which has resulted in the suspension of foreign supplies of raw materials, equipment and spare parts to Venezuelan companies, disrupting their production. "We are making progress ... we have to work very hard," Merentes told reporters Wednesday.
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We're asking the priests and bishops to ration wine and look for alternatives during this emergency, said Jose Antonio Da Conceicao, a national church official. Church leaders say the problem arose when the local supplier of the specialty sacramental wine used at Mass had a bad harvest. They turned to importers, but the companies told them it was impossible to obtain dollars to bring the wine into the country because of Venezuela's strict currency controls. That has been a common complaint of private businesses against Venezuela's socialist government under late President Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro.
Basic products, from dairy products to wheat flour and diapers to toilet paper, have been increasingly hard to find in Venezuela, causing long queues and even scuffles in shops. Maduro says right-wing opponents and unscrupulous businessmen are trying to sabotage the economy and his new administration by hoarding products. He has chastised Venezuelans for unnecessary panic-buying and met with business leaders to seek solutions amid widespread mockery over the shortage of toilet paper.
The shortage of wheat flour has also hit production of the bread used for communion, church leaders say. Meanwhile, the local Catholic Church has given priests permission to use different types of wine for communion. In extreme necessity ... they can provisionally use Chilean or Argentine wines of good quality - French, Spanish and Italian too, but they are very expensive, said an internal church memo.
Church Wine Runs Low in Latest Venezuelan Shortage
A spokesman for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduros government said it is incorrect to call the plan rationing because it is meant to fight smuggling of price-controlled food across the border into Colombia. He said there are no plans to extend the program nationally. Details of how the system in Zulia State will work are still being worked out, said Blagdimir Labrador, the state governors chief of staff, but Zulia will issue computer chip cards beginning next week that will limit consumer purchases of products including rice, flour, cooking oil, sugar and powdered milk, he said. The quantities each family will be allowed to buy, on a daily or weekly basis, have not yet been determined, he said.
The system will register purchases remotely on computer servers so the same person cant go to a different store on the same day and purchase the same product, Labrador said. The foray appears to be Venezuelas first into food rationing. Communist-run Cuba has issued monthly ration cards for basic foodstuffs for decades, although the number of items has dwindled in recent years. Labrador said the system would initially apply to 65 supermarkets in two cities, Maracaibo and San Francisco, in the state of 3.7 million people bordering Colombia.
The president of the states supermarket association, Andres de Candido, said he did not believe the system, run by the state-owned CANTV telecommunications company, would be ready in all supermarkets by next week, but said his group is ready to support it if it truly gets food smuggling to Colombia under control. Authorities said that is the sole intent of the new system. This is only in Zulia State and it is not rationing, Venezuelan Information Ministry spokesman Raimundo Urrechaga said. It is focused only on Zulia, to control contraband.
That is fine with Angelica Silva, a 52-year-old housewife who could not find butter or toilet paper in a downtown Caracas market on Tuesday. This isnt a poor country like Cuba, where we all depend on the government, she said. However, Silva was still worried. What scares me is that there will be more scarcity and nobody will tolerate that, she said. To fight gasoline smuggling to Colombia, Zulia and another border state, Tachira, have in the past two years imposed a computer-chip system that limits purchases. However, it does not appear to have stemmed the cross-border smuggling of heavily subsidized Venezuelan gasoline.
That makes many economists skeptical that limiting food purchases, or rationing, can end worsening shortages of basic foodstuffs and medicine that Venezuelans generally blame on government mismanagement in a nation that gets 97 percent of its export earnings from oil. One reason is that price controls on more than 100 items imposed more than a decade ago under late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez are regularly ignored in all but state-run markets. Merchants say adhering to them would be suicidal for their businesses given inflation reached 29.4 percent in April.
Food rationing to begin in Venezuelan state - Taipei Times
