Smuggling soars as Venezuela's economy sinks

[Bacchus4.0]

http://news.yahoo.com/smuggling-soars-venezuelas-economy-sinks-131017275.html



As the formal economy tanks and businesses go under, more and more people have turned to myriad illicit schemes to trade food, medicine and gasoline. Criminal gangs, the poor, professionals and government officials are all cashing in.

The most eye-catching subsidy is for gasoline: filling a car costs just a few U.S. cents. A 40,000-liter tank truck can be filled for $10 at the black market rate and sold in Colombia for around $20,000 - a profit of nearly 200,000 percent.

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"We're obliged to engage in contraband," said Alejandra, 41, who once raised chickens but now smuggles fuel across fields into Colombia to help feed her six children. She earns far more in a day than the roughly $10, at the black market rate, she used to in two weeks.

"Soldiers, teachers, engineers, doctors, dentists - all types of professional come here to sell gasoline because salaries aren't worth anything," added Alejandra, in the fields of Guanarito, meters from the border.

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"We pay the National Guard a few thousand bolivars to get across, depending on what we have in the truck," said one smuggler in the downtrodden western border town of Paraguachon, who moves food into Colombia in his pickup.

http://news.yahoo.com/smuggling-soars-venezuelas-economy-sinks-131017275.html

[yeoman6987]

1. Not a surprise really