CARACAS: It may have oil galore, but Venezuela also boasts an economy so gutted by inflation and shortages that for many people shopping is a second job.

Venezuelans make daily treks to automated bank teller machines as runaway price hikes gnaw away at their purchasing power.

Shortages abound of such basics as milk, soap and toilet paper. Stores open late or close early because they run out of stuff to sell. Way before dawn, lines form outside department stores. Bartering is back. For many Venezuelans, free time is no longer so free.

A survey by pollster Datanalisis found that they spend on average eight hours a week (equivalent to a work day) simply running around to stores trying to buy the essentials, many of which Venezuela imports.

“Today I have been to three stores. In one I got deodorant and in another, soap. Yesterday I spent three hours in line and when it came my turn, they were out of what I wanted,” Carlos Jones, a 50-year-old electrician, said.

IMPORTERS STRUGGLE: And as importers have trouble buying dollars at the cheap, official, government-set rate of 6.3 bolivars — the local currency — to the dollar, they often turn to the black market to get greenbacks. There, a dollar is 30 times more expensive. And of course, that cost is passed on to consumers.

For months last year, the government simply stopped publishing inflation figures. In late December, it finally reported that the rate for the 12 months to November 2014 topped 63pc — one of the highest in the world. The economy is also in recession, it added.

‘TOTAL LIMBO’: Teresa Merchan, a retired school teacher aged 74, got in but came away empty-handed. “I came to buy a stove and they offered me a refrigerator. We live in total limbo,” Merchan said.

Some economists say that in order to reactivate the economy the government should devalue the bolivar and ease the currency controls. The black market dollar is so expensive it costs nearly twice the face value of the 100-bolivar note, the largest there is.

“Inflation is tearing away at Venezuelans’ wages,” economist Francisco Faraco said. And waiting in line, he said, has become a niche in the economy, with even its own word born for those who do it — ‘colero’, from the Spanish ‘cola’, or line.

Some people do it to buy things and resell them illegally in poor neighbourhoods; others do it to stock up on scarce items; and still others queue up just to grab a spot and later sell it.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2015

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