8/22/2014
If they didn’t involve so many hardships for citizens and so terrible consequences for Venezuela, the latest statements and actions by Nicolás Maduro and some government officials in a bid to “attack” the acute food shortages issue would be simply laughable.
It is no longer a matter of blaming shortages on consumers, as Maduro and Edmée Betancourt, the then-Minister of Trade, claimed in 2013, because these compulsively acquired all the existing goods and products which resulted in artificial shortages.
Rather than understanding that the problem is due to a drop in production and a drought in foreign currency to buy the products required by the population, now the “queues” making the lives of consumers miserable every day get the blame. A few days ago, Andrés Eloy Méndez, the newly appointed Superintendent of Socio-Economic Rights, announced that the Government will start a “war against queues” at supermarkets, another fictitious conflagration that adds to the so-called “economic war” Maduro frequently resorts to.
This way, with this new declaration of war, the Superintendency deployed its “troops” and started a “battle” of audits against these local food retailers across the nation, especially those belonging to the State network (Abastos Bicentenario and Mercal).
From this “battle” of audits arose the erroneous idea that one of the main causes of people spending up to three and four hours in a commercial establishment is that supermarkets have a significant number of checkout counters closed. And a couple of supermarkets were fined over this, including the Bicentenario Plaza Venezuela in Caracas, where only 26 checkout counters out of 60 were operational. Also, the Bicentenario branch was requested to outline a plan to cover and ensure the operation of all counters in the future.
What nobody has heard from these government officials is that they are going to analyze the impact of the current Labor Law over companies. As it has been warned until exhaustion by various representatives of local business associations, this Law gave rise to a series of distortions in the employer-employee relationship, which discourages productivity, promotes indiscipline and absence from work, freezes new hirings and the agreements for establishing work shifts and overtime pay.
But, if the measure of blaming the queues issue on a smaller number of operational checkout counters was not absurd enough, after the audits procedure it was announced that Venezuelans will have to go through new controls as they try to stock up on food and basic goods.
For example, it has just been announced that the ministries of Science and Technology and Food are developing a biometric fingerprint recognition system that will allow to monitor “who buys and how he/she does it” and to control the so-called “bachaqueo” (a type of smuggling activity common in the Venezuelan border with Colombia), according to Méndez. This mechanism would be put into operation for both private and public network supermarkets by early 2015.
And this sounds as bad as an electronic rationing card does.
In addition, announcements on the centralization of the sales network in the hands of the State were made again, as well as a series of actions to reinforce the presence of the Superintendence of Fair Prices (SUNDEE), where as usual the military sector and members of the so-called Bolívar-Chávez Battle Units (UBCH) will have a strong presence.
What the Government would have been right about is its catchy motto “Efficiency Kills Queues…” Well, as long as there were fewer controls, less corruption and more market and business freedom for the achievement of such efficiency.
source
If they didn’t involve so many hardships for citizens and so terrible consequences for Venezuela, the latest statements and actions by Nicolás Maduro and some government officials in a bid to “attack” the acute food shortages issue would be simply laughable.
It is no longer a matter of blaming shortages on consumers, as Maduro and Edmée Betancourt, the then-Minister of Trade, claimed in 2013, because these compulsively acquired all the existing goods and products which resulted in artificial shortages.
Rather than understanding that the problem is due to a drop in production and a drought in foreign currency to buy the products required by the population, now the “queues” making the lives of consumers miserable every day get the blame. A few days ago, Andrés Eloy Méndez, the newly appointed Superintendent of Socio-Economic Rights, announced that the Government will start a “war against queues” at supermarkets, another fictitious conflagration that adds to the so-called “economic war” Maduro frequently resorts to.This way, with this new declaration of war, the Superintendency deployed its “troops” and started a “battle” of audits against these local food retailers across the nation, especially those belonging to the State network (Abastos Bicentenario and Mercal).
From this “battle” of audits arose the erroneous idea that one of the main causes of people spending up to three and four hours in a commercial establishment is that supermarkets have a significant number of checkout counters closed. And a couple of supermarkets were fined over this, including the Bicentenario Plaza Venezuela in Caracas, where only 26 checkout counters out of 60 were operational. Also, the Bicentenario branch was requested to outline a plan to cover and ensure the operation of all counters in the future.
What nobody has heard from these government officials is that they are going to analyze the impact of the current Labor Law over companies. As it has been warned until exhaustion by various representatives of local business associations, this Law gave rise to a series of distortions in the employer-employee relationship, which discourages productivity, promotes indiscipline and absence from work, freezes new hirings and the agreements for establishing work shifts and overtime pay.
But, if the measure of blaming the queues issue on a smaller number of operational checkout counters was not absurd enough, after the audits procedure it was announced that Venezuelans will have to go through new controls as they try to stock up on food and basic goods.
For example, it has just been announced that the ministries of Science and Technology and Food are developing a biometric fingerprint recognition system that will allow to monitor “who buys and how he/she does it” and to control the so-called “bachaqueo” (a type of smuggling activity common in the Venezuelan border with Colombia), according to Méndez. This mechanism would be put into operation for both private and public network supermarkets by early 2015.
And this sounds as bad as an electronic rationing card does.
In addition, announcements on the centralization of the sales network in the hands of the State were made again, as well as a series of actions to reinforce the presence of the Superintendence of Fair Prices (SUNDEE), where as usual the military sector and members of the so-called Bolívar-Chávez Battle Units (UBCH) will have a strong presence.
What the Government would have been right about is its catchy motto “Efficiency Kills Queues…” Well, as long as there were fewer controls, less corruption and more market and business freedom for the achievement of such efficiency.
source
No comments:
Post a Comment