Venezuela raises petrol price for first time in 20 years

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

Venezuela raises petrol price for first time in 20 years

18 February 2016 Business

Venezuela is raising petrol prices for the first time in 20 years, although the fuel will still be the cheapest in the world.

President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised address that pump prices of premium fuel would rise from the equivalent of $0.01 a litre to $0.95.

He unveiled a series measures to help ease Venezuela's economic crisis, including devaluing the currency.

The rise in the heavily-subsidised fuel price will save $800m a year.

"Venezuela has the cheapest gasoline in the world. The cost is almost nothing," Mr Maduro said. "This is a necessary measure, a necessary action to balance things, I take responsibility for it."

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Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35600921

[HooptieWagon]

1. Wow, that's going to cause riots.

I was last there in '93. While there, they raised the price of gas from $0.04/gal to $0.08/gal. My flight from Barcelona to Caracas was cancelled because the Natl airline went on strike. Not the employees, the airline. So I grabbed a ride with a magazine publisher friend driving on a tiny road through the mountains at 20 mph, and got stopped and held at gunpoint by soldiers (govt, not rebels fortunately). Lovely time. Had a blast.

[Bacchus4.0]

2. Raising gas prices is what precipitated Chavismo and the disaster they live today

Not that they shouldn't have raised prices before but the government still rules by "what would Hugo do?" instead of making decisions based on what is best for the nation. This had to be extremely painful for chavistas to do because the 1989 price hike led to the rise of chavismo and now they are repeating the same thing.