LatinNews Daily Report - 25 October 2013

POLITICS | Food deliveries are arriving, says government ahead of election/Christmas. On 24 October Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro praised the work of Venezuela’s food minister Félix Osorio, as Osorio announced that over 36,000 tonnes (t) of food imports had arrived in the country in recent months from Colombia and Uruguay. Speaking in Tucaní, Mérida, where he inaugurated a new warehouse for the state-run food company Productora y Distribuidora de Alimentos SA (Pdval), Osorio said that another 400,000t of food from Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina was due in November and December, with 80,000 also due from Brazil, after the vice-president for economic affairs Rafael Ramírez this week inked a new supply deal with Brazil. “We are in an economic war and we are going to fight it with more production and distribution [of food]”, Osorio stated. Meanwhile Agriculture Minister Yván Gil said that supplies of liquid and powered milk would be restored to normal “soon”, thanks to government support for local producers. Gil stated that the current national milk production of 50,000 litres a day covered 50% of the domestic need, with the rest imported. He added that “all” the vegetables consumed in Venezuela were produced domestically, with 65% of meat consumption also produced domestically. He said that local meat production was growing at about 4%-5% a year, noting that consumption had gone from 14 to 28 kilos per capita a year (without specifying dates). Venezuela is importing meat, rice, maize and other essential goods from its regional neighbours. President Maduro yesterday admitted on State TV that the government had used the country’s strategic food reserves in recent months to deal with the supply shortages. “What there was, we put on the street, otherwise there would be no food in your house”, he said, stressing, “if it wasn’t for the economic war there would be controlled inflation and food supply to the market”. Food price inflation was 4.9% month-on-month and 67.3% year-on-year in September, on central bank index data.