August 2012: Venezuelan state governor: Cuba inefficient at mangaging ports, food dist. ["bleeding them dry"] "Hugo Chávez’s government has granted Cuba key concessions in Venezuela’s food distribution system by making the island its purchasing agent abroad as well as its seaport manager — activities that represent a fabulous business for the Castro brothers while generating more scarcity and huge losses for Venezuela.
The governor of the state of Carabobo,Henrique Salas Feo, said that a great part of the problems of scarcity and cost of living increases in Venezuela could be attributed to the corruption of people close to its government and Cuba’s inefficiency managing the facilities at Puerto Cabello.
“Puerto Cabello is the entry gate to Venezuela;it handles 80percent of everything that enters or leaves the country, but since the Cubans took over, things are getting worse by the day, which is affecting Venezuelans’ daily life,” Salas said in a telephone interview with El Nuevo Herald.
“The economic reality of all Venezuelans depends on the good management of the port,but imported goods are incurring in enormous delays that create scarcity and increase costs that end up transferred to the consumer,”..
According to the governor’s estimates, poor port management and corruption are provoking a 30-day delay in containers entering the country,which contrasts with the 72hours it took before Cubans took control.
The port terminal is of particular importance due to the severe deterioration of the Venezuelan productivity as a result of government policies, which has increased the dependence on imports, he said.
The situation created by expropriations, the strict currency exchange control and the system that controls pricing is leading Venezuela to go abroad to acquire basic consumer products.
The Chávez administration has also granted concessions to Cuban enterprises to acquire products abroad, a situation that lends itself to corruption.
“[The Cubans] control everything that comes in and goes out......
....“They are bleeding the country dry,”.....
Schadenfreude
If we could just get rid of those pesky few who refuse to understand that we all have to work together, we'd finally have a worker's paradise and everybody would be prosperous. Don't you bourgeois pigs understand that?
I wasn't going to put in a /sarc tag, but then realized I'd get 10 replies from angry FReepers telling me to move over to DU. I could post the above over there and get 150 replies telling me "right on".
I’d laugh but our cuts are coming...
Wonder what will happen when the US Gov't mandates low prices for medical care?
Well...
They do have a surplus of red undershirts.
As to be expected, of course, I just read this morning in the WSJ that Obama is planning on making one of his priorities the “strengthening of ties” and “improvement of the relationship” with Venezuela. This, to me, explains why VZ felt perfectly free to pretend that Chavez wasn’t dead and go ahead by illegally installing the “chavista” government. They obvioiusly know that Obama has got their back.
My take is that Hugo had big dreams.......
Had he not been mortally afflicted by cancer, he would be the savior of Cuba and annex it to Venezuela .
Actually Pepsi and Polar merged a while ago so Pepsi really owns both...
I wonder how much Pepsi really cares since hyperinflation and monetary devaluation in Venezuela is costing them 100's of millions in write offs and asset charges every year...
Kinda looks like the next “big cut” for Venezuela will start at the very top.
It’ll be amusing when that douche starts smelling sulfur for real, instead of rhetorically for a UN speech.
Sadly, we won’t have an administration with the inclination to make the best of that event.