Thursday, July 14, 2016

How Bad Can it Get in Venezuela? A Toilet Paper Manufacturer Was Just Nationalized

Venezuela’s government said it occupied Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s local plant, days after the company had halted operations because of shortages of raw materials in the socialist crisis-stricken country.

“Kimberly-Clark will continue producing for all Venezuelans and is now in the hands of the workers,” Labor Minister Oswaldo Vera said Monday in a televised address from the company’s plant in central Aragua state, before signing an order to take it over, according to WSJ.. The labor ministry claims Kimberly-Clark had violated Venezuelan law by firing more than 900 workers without consulting the government.

“It doesn’t matter who’s running the factory,” said Henkel Garcia, director of the Caracas business consultancy Econometrica told WSJ. “The bottom line is that there are no raw materials that anyone can afford to import.”

Since taking power 17 years ago, Venezuela’s leftist government—first under late leader Hugo Chávez and now under his successor, Mr. Maduro—have seized more than 1,200 farms, companies and other private businesses in the name of the Socialist Revolution.

A combination of this nationalization, runaway inflation and price controls is destroying the country,

-RW

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