Food scarcity persist as Venezuela crisis deepens
July 11, 2016, 10:41 am

Venezuelan citizens carry bags of food and other products they bought at a supermarket in Colombia after the crossings were opened on Sunday [Xinhua]

In just the past year, food protests have increased exponentially as prices skyrocketed.

The crime rate has soared with violent robberies taking place including hundreds of looting incidents.

Venezuelans now face multiple daily power outages while businesses shut down and factory output drops significantly.

Even for those who can afford to buy food, staple scarcity has become a major challenge for the government.

On Sunday, the authorities opened the border crossings with neighboring countries such as Colombia, to allow desperate Venezuelans to cross over and purchase their dietary and medicinal needs. But one of the challenges was the devaluation of the Venezuelan bolivar currency.

Venezuela has been unable to sufficiently import its most basic needs as the drastic drop in oil prices since 2014 has created an enormous financial shortfall. Oil revenues have fallen from nearly $90 billion to about $20 billion as foreign debt has mushroomed to $140 billion or so.

Venezuela, like some emerging economies, has based nearly its entire GDP growth on oil exports. With an oil glut now entering its third year, the International Monetary Fund forecasts that inflation in 2016 will hit more than 720 per cent and that the economy will contract by 8 per cent.

Some analysts say the inflation rate could hit as high as 1,700 per cent in 2017.

The spiraling economic crisis appears to have gotten the better of Leftist President Nicolas Maduro and his party.

In April 2013, Maduro won a national election by a margin of only 1.5 per cent.

As the economic crises worsened, the opposition found its hand gaining strength.

In December 2015, Venezuela’s opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) party won 99 of 167 parliamentary seats.

The number of seats gives the opposition party a majority in parliament in what is a sweeping defeat of Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

The PSUV won only 46 seats.

Voter turnout was particularly high at over 74 per cent, an indication that many former socialists were now fleeing the national policies that have governed the country for more than 16 years.

Maduro, like his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chavez, says he is the victim of a right-wing conspiracy orchestrated by the US to remove him from power.

He has resorted to the court system, which remains loyal to his cause, to stall legislation being passed in parliament, and arrest dissidents.

Neighboring Latin American states say that democratic institutions are quickly being eroded in Venezuela.

Some analysts believe that Maduro could come under sufficient pressure from regional allies as well as from cadres within his own party to call for early elections this fall.

The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies