CARACAS – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said yesterday he had opened talks to buy a supermarket chain owned by France’s Casino, a month after expropriating another chain owned by the same group.
Buying out the Cada supermarket chain would give Chavez, who has nationalized a swath of the nation’s industries, considerably greater control over food distribution over two years after food shortages dented his popularity.
He also ordered the expropriation of warehouses belonging to diversified food processing company Polar, the maker of Venezuela’s most popular beer and part owner of Cada.
“I have ordered a friendly negotiation to acquire all of Cada and its distribution centre,” Chavez said in a televised speech. The takeover would give Chavez access to a network including 35 Cada grocery stores, eight distribution centres and a fleet of trucks.
The leftist leader in 2003 decreed price controls on staple products and in 2008, as food prices soared at the height of the commodities boom, decreed a law giving the Venezuelan state unprecedented control over the sale and distribution of food.
The issue of food prices came into focus again last month after a sharp currency devaluation led Chavez to take over the Casino-owned hypermarket chain Exito.
Cada is owned by a group called Cativen, which is majority owned by France’s Casino and partly owned by Polar.
“I am sure that we can reach an agreement such that the republic will be owner of Cativen,” Chavez said during the inauguration of a state-run chain created from the old Exito stores. Chavez’s popularity suffered in 2007 after products such as chicken and milk became increasingly scarce, due partly to price controls that were out of step with inflation.
He eased that problem by making price controls more flexible and launching a massive food imports campaign.
The announcement came hours after Chavez slammed Polar in a television broadcast for maintaining warehouses in the middle of the Venezuelan city of Barquisimeto, urging that housing be built there instead.
“What is Polar doing with warehouses in the middle of the city?” Chavez said. He said he instructed the governor and mayor, with whom he is politically allied, to order Polar to move the warehouses to the outskirts of the city.
He told the labour minister to carry out an inspection of the company’s facilities following complaints by Polar workers in the eastern part of the country that they were not being paid appropriately.
Inspections by Venezuelan state agencies have in the past been a prelude for nationalizations, most notably in the steel and cement sectors, which were taken over in 2008.
Chavez also said yesterday he was replacing Commerce Minister Eduardo Saman, who has for months led government efforts to ensure companies obey price controls on staple goods that Chavez decreed in 2003.
