Venezuela introduces Cuba-like food card
BY ANTONIO MARIA DELGADO
adelgado@ElNuevoHerald.com
Presented by President Hugo Chávez as an instrument to make shopping for
groceries easier, the ``Good Life Card'' is making various segments of
the population wary because they see it as a furtive attempt to
introduce a rationing card similar to the one in Cuba.
The measure could easily become a mechanism to control the population,
according to civil society groups.
``We see that in short-term this could become a rationing card probably
similar to the one used in Cuba,'' Roberto León Parilli, president of
the National Association of Users and Consumers, told El Nuevo Herald.
``It would use more advanced technological means [than those used in
Cuba], but when they tell you where to buy and what the limits of what
you can buy are, they are conditioning your purchases.''
Chávez said Tuesday that the card could be used to buy groceries at the
government chain of markets and supplies.
``I have called it a Good Life Card so far,'' Chávez said in a brief
statement made on the government television channel. ``It's a card for
you to purchase what you are going to take and they keep deducting. It's
to buy what you need, not to promote communism, but to buy what just
what you need.''
Former director of Venezuela's Central Bank, Domingo Maza Zavala, said
this could become a rationing card that would limit your purchases in
light of the country's recurring problems with supplies.
``If the intention is to beat inflation, they should find a good source
of supply for the entire market and not only for centers that are part
of social chains,'' he said. ``To do that, you need to encourage local
production with the help of the private sector, since they cannot do it
by themselves. The government cannot become the ultimate food distributor.''
Humberto Ortega Díaz, minister for public banking and president of the
Venezuelan Bank, minimized such criticism and said that all this measure
is trying to do is to improve service at the government supply chains.
``Why can't our Bicentennial chain use a card to make it easier for
customers to buy their groceries?'' the minister said in an interview
broadcast on a government channel. He said that this type of initiative
has been used by private commercial entities.
Yet, critics pointed out that the measure could turn out not as innocent
as the minister makes it to be, and they insist that the government
control over the supply chain is too broad and depends greatly on
imports the government authorizes through its currency exchange system.
In theory, the government could begin to favor the import of products to
be sold through the government chains and have more control over the
type of products purchased and the people buying them.
Jaime Suchlicki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for
Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said that Venezuela's current problems
of scarce supplies are very similar to those Cuba faced when Fidel
Castro introduced the rationing card.
``The card emerged when goods began to become scarce,'' Suchlicki said.
``The government had seized many companies that did not work because the
government managed them poorly. Then they decided to distribute
groceries through those cards.''
And although the cards were introduced as a mechanism to deal with
scarcities, Suchlicki said, they later became an instrument of control.
``People depended on the government to eat, and nothing gives you more
power than having people depend on you to get their food quota,'' he said.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/04/1807508/venezuela-introduces-cuba-like.html
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