Venezuela Squanders Its Oil Wealth

[Bacchus4.0]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-18/venezuela-goes-from-bling-to-blat-as-oil-wealth-squandered

(Bloomberg) -- By packing bags for $1 a day and with tips at a Caracas supermarket, Luis has managed to save up for a Japanese sports motorbike. His secret? Getting hold of scarce food before it hits the shelves.

Luis offers preferential access to detergent, milk and sugar to his clientele of about 100 diplomats at a Centro Madeirense shop in the south of the capital. In return, they offer him occasional work as a handyman or courier and loan him money during dry patches.

“Times are tough. We have to spin to survive,” Luis, 30, said in an interview in Caracas last month. “We have to be creative with the opportunities at hand to make ends meet.”


Price controls have emptied stores of most goods, while the world’s highest inflation has pushed what is available beyond the means of most Venezuelans. To make ends meet, they exploit the perks of their jobs to trade goods and services informally, mirroring networks that developed amid the scarcities in the former Soviet Union and came to be known as “blat.”