Venezuela has made it impossible to grow businesses (and illegal to close them)

Rachel Cunliffe

Businesses in Venezuela have a problem.

In fact, almost everyone in Venezuela has multiple problems. Starvation, for example. Shortages of basic goods. Understaffed, understaffed hospitals. A corrupt and increasingly militarized government determined to protect the current president, Nicolas Maduro, at all costs.

But businesses, especially factories, face a more specific problem. With Venezuela’s economy collapsing and the currency devaluing by almost two-thirds in the past year, the raw materials needed for production are now prohibitively expensive or simply impossible to obtain. This is not helped by either the government’s high import tariffs and currency restrictions, or the bottom-line price controls that make running a business a highly unprofitable endeavor.

This catastrophe is entirely the work of President Maduro. But instead of acknowledging that 17 years of Chavista socialism were a terrible mistake that has shattered Venezuela, Maduro is tightening the iron fist of state control.

Illegal closure of factories

The BBC reports that the Venezuelan government has seized a factory that produces hygiene products such as toilet paper, owned by the American company Kimberly-Clark. Kimberly-Clark's crime? Closing the factory due to an inability to procure raw materials.

Venezuela's labor minister, Osvaldo Vera, called the closure "illegal" and promised that the plant would continue to operate "in the hands of the workers." The obvious question should be: with what materials? How does the government think the plant can operate again without the raw materials it needs?

Another problem, in the face of the president, is chilling authoritarianism - the declaration that a private company has broken the law by ceasing its operations. In May, President Maduro threatened with arrest and imprisonment the owners of factories that stop production, saying that Venezuela's productive capacity is "paralyzed by the bourgeoisie."

Who would want to work in a place like that?

In reality, the paralysis is caused by the government's radically anti-business policies, including such threats. What company, whether local or international, would want to build a factory in Venezuela under such tyrannical conditions, knowing that it is impossible to make a profit and that the owners risk arrest for trying?

Maduro has blamed the latest crisis, as well as all previous crises, on the war waged against his regime by the opposition in secret collaboration with US forces. The simple fact is that he is leaving business owners with no options, creating a climate in which it is impossible to operate. Daily protests against food shortages across the country show that Venezuelans are desperate. The time for the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro is running out.

You can see the original article HERE

Translation: Velin Stefanov

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