Foreign Exchange Administration Commission (Cadivi) extends hours

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): The Foreign Exchange Administration Commission (Cadivi) announced that people would be able to carry out procedures on its website for 24 hours a day, while a government minister blamed large companies and monopolies for disrupting the system of official price controls.

Cadivi's move was seen as a response to shortages of food and other basic essentials, many of which are largely imported into Venezuela.

The food industry has consistently argued that official controls on foreign exchange and prices are prompting shortages. Officials insist companies are deliberately creating shortages to force the government's hand so that it gives way on official controls.

The latest official to take up this line of argument is Light Industries and Commerce Minister William Contreras. "Monopolitic and oligarchic practices are what are disrupting the cost structures," Contreras claimed. "We have detected that the greatest margin of speculation is happening in the mechanisms of distribution," he said. Many times, he added, manipulation could not be perceived; the public could not see it.

Contreras conceded there might be "some hangovers and problems in some products" which the government was determined to resolve. But his emphasis was on industry's presumed role in supplies going short and prices zooming ever upwards. He wanted to know why prices for animal foodstuffs, which account for 30 percent of overall production costs, had jumped by 154 percent in two months.

Officials were investigating whether producers were involved in "practices that are not consonant with the economic reality of the country."

Shipments of powdered milk ... the most notorious instance of a basic foodstuff repeatedly in short supply ... from Brazil, Argentina and as far away as New Zealand are said to be arriving at Venezuelan ports.