Venezuela's Maduro halts restricted food sale plan

[Socialistlemur]

2. They do need to do something

Maduro tends to put his mouth in gear before he thinks it through. The problem is real, and instead of shutting it down he needed to have an alternative. I think the best solution is food stamps. These could be issued to each adult and used to buy basic staples. Anybody wishing to buy over and above can do so but pay the price. What's happening right now is a huge surge in inflation, and the poor aren't able to buy what they need. In Zulia they have food smugglers buying subsidized food and smuggling it into Colombia. There it is sold for pesos which are changed to dollars.

Thus a food product purchased in Venezuela under price controls which assume the bolivar is worth 6.3 to the usd, can be sold for pesos in Colombia at a price equivalent to 30 bolivars to the usd. After deducting expenses for transport and commission to Colombians its possible to get about 4x profit. Because the penalty is zero once the food is n Colombia, and it's low in Venezuela, every Tom dick and Harry is packing loads over trails over the border. The food reaches Colombia, it's piled up and put in trucks....and resold back into Venezuela or sent on to Colombian towns. Either way it's an incredibly lucrative trade. It's so good there are reports now of Venezuelan packages showing up in Aruba and Trinidad. This means there's a sea trade using fishing boats.

This just can't go on, they have to devalue and they have to issue food stamps. The Zulia governor devised this solution out of desperation. Zulia is an oil producing state and he can't afford to have over one hundred thousand oil workers pissed off because they can't find food.