When will the government deal with the rise in prices?
By Eleazar DÃaz Rangel.-
The problem of prices has become the issue that most worries and anguishes Venezuelans, because the days go by, weeks and months and they only increase, and the government does nothing to stop them. What was costing a thousand Bolivars yesterday , tomorrow was 1,500 or more. No one knows why such unexpected and continuous rises occur, from one day to the next. But the most serious aspect of this situation is that it has not been possible for the government action to detect any responsibility, nor ordered the arrest and prosecution of the alleged perpetrators and prevent the prices from rising further.
It is not difficult to collect some examples, because in any gathering of Venezuelans the most frequent topic of conversation is this one of the prices. See if not these examples:
Salt, from 1,500 to 2,500; ground meat 7,500; chicken thighs 7,000; 8,500 cheese; eggs (30) 8,500; small gas cylinder, 250 to 500
The transport of these and other products becomes more expensive due to the abuses of neighbors, blocking the roads, and sometimes there is a truck, for example, who must wait up to 7 hours in a line. Those prices correspond to Thursday, they were lower at the beginning of the week, and today or tomorrow, they must be more expensive.
A separate chapter deserves the price of car oil, which, as all Venezuelans know, has been produced in Venezuela for years. The case is that at the end of December was in Bs.S. 3.900, and during all these days of January has increased without stop, on Friday it was in 27,000, and surely tomorrow, Monday will cost more. How is such an abusive and blatant increase explained if it is produced in Venezuela? And I understand that President Maduro does not refer to those prices, but why are both the Energy Minister and the PDVSA board silent? They do not even inform the country what the production costs of a liter of oil are, and why their prices go up so much.
A friend tells me that on December 29 he paid Bs. 7,200 for a bottle of whiskey, and last Friday, he had gone up to 56,500. To not believe it.
The situation of PDVSA
All of you, or the vast majority, will be aware of the facts of corruption in PDVSA and in some of its subsidiary companies. Like most Venezuelans, they will have been surprised at the magnitude of the state’s losses. The public denunciations of the General Prosecutor summed millions of dollars. Some of those responsible, from the highest levels of the oil industry, are imprisoned and prosecuted. In view of the country changed the image of such an important company, such were the serious facts of corruption revealed.
But there is another situation that is not known to that same majority. It is only perceptible for those who work in the oil company, who can appreciate it. I refer to the discouragement of its employees and workers, to the discouragement that exists more and more widespread. See how there are those who join their respective hours of work, and who do it later, without any consequence, and how that discouragement is expressed in lower performance, in the bankruptcy of work ethics and in the flight of employees abroad. Anyway.
Being aware of this situation, I asked two middle-level employees, university graduates, which of the two situations is worse for PDVSA, and without hesitation, each on his stage, they answered that the internal situation is the most serious, because it threatens the disintegration of the company and extends to more of its workers, however, corruption reduces to a number of managerial level, “and badly good, have been discovered and arrested or are wanted.”
I do not know what the PDVSA executives will think about this and whether they will be aware of this in the high levels of government.
Concern in Russia
The Russian television (RT) was repeating this headline: How do you explain that pronouncement of the Russian government? We can think of three explanations, the first one that is part of the confrontation with the United States; the second is a way of expressing solidarity with Venezuela, and the third, which is the product of their military intelligence services, that would have detected enough elements for an affirmation like that, reinforced by the Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a press conference against the acts interventionists in Venezuela and denounced that the “dialogue was undermined by external factors.” This line was expressed more recently when Moscow expressed its concern about what appear to be attempts by the president of the National Assembly to consider himself interim President of the Republic, and on Wednesday it was announced in Washington that he was studying the possibility of recognizing him as President of Venezuela.
Do you have any idea what this eventuality would mean?
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- Iván Márquez, Colombian guerrilla leader who negotiated peace agreements with the government, regrets having given up the weapons, believes that it was a mistake, such has been the no compliance of Santos and company of the agreements they made.
- It is already appropriate that we be informed of the investigation into the kidnapping, real or supposed, of the president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó. There remained many doubts that have not been cleared, and it seems that there has been enough time to offer at least some first results of the investigative process.
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- As a sentence to sustain the persecution against the people of the left, the judicial decision to condemn the leader of the Tupac Amaru movement, Milagro Sala, in Argentina. she has been sentenced to 13 years in prison.
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- Those who wonder where is the colleague Aram Aharorian, I will tell you that he is in the South and that he has just published two books of high interest: “Progressivism in his labyrinth. Of access to the government to the seizure of power,” and, on the media and journalism, “the murder of the truth.” I just receive them, and by the indexes of each one and the rigor of its author, I suppose they are important.
Source URL: Ultimas Noticias
Translated by JRE/AR
