Venezuelans are accustomed to severe shortages of cooking oil, diapers and other staple products, but those hoping to buy what they could find got a new unpleasant surprise last week.
They found malls dark and shuttered under a government electricity rationing regime.
“This is madness, this is not the solution!” said Nataly Orta, 48, at the locked gate of the Lider mall in eastern Caracas. “It’s a drastic measure that will only create more unemployment and worsen an economy already in crisis.”
Photo: AFP
Authorities ordered more than 250 shopping centers to find other sources of power from 1pm to 3pm and again from 7pm to 9pm, for the next three months.
A business association representing shopping centers, Cavececo, on Saturday said the authorities had agreed to relax that requirement by supplying some stores with power in return for them reducing their opening hours.
Unable to generate their own electricity, most malls had been shutting their doors during those afternoon and evening time slots.
“I came to the pharmacy and supermarket to see what I could find and I come across this instead,” said Julia Torres, 54, outside the shuttered Lider. “Every day, we’re a little more surprised by what’s happening in Venezuela.”
Security concerns make the well-lit, guarded malls — with their restaurants, movie theaters and theaters — a preferred leisure option for Venezuelans.
On Thursday, a top hoteliers’ association said that five-star hotels would also have to start generating their own power for several hours a day.
Authorities say the rationing is a temporary measure brought on by the El Nino weather phenomenon, blamed for a drought that has lowered production at the country’s hydropower plants.
“The government is taking concrete action to minimize the decline” in reservoir levels, Venezuelan Minister of Electricity Luis Motta said.
However, the opposition, recently boosted by winning a majority in the legislature, accuses socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s administration of failing to anticipate the problem and not adequately investing in the country’s power grid.
Cavececo said that the Ministry of Electricity had agreed to allow stores without their own generators to receive electricity uninterrupted if they only open from noon to 7pm.
Cavececo director Claudia Itriago said ahead of that announcement that “the cuts will affect 2.5 million people who go to these places daily.”
“Shopping centers account for only 3 percent of national electricity consumption,” she said.
Even malls that generate their own electricity can cover only around half their needs, she said.
The government enforces strict capital controls that have caused a shortage of foreign currency, which seriously limits companies’ ability to import the necessary equipment.
“Ordering shopping centers to generate their own energy without giving them access to foreign currency for equipment in a country subject to foreign-exchange controls is absurd,” economist Luis Vicente Leon said.
Businesses say electricity rationing will harm an economy that is suffering from triple-digit inflation and contracted 10 percent last year. The IMF estimates it will contract another 8 percent this year.
Retail workers are worried the knock-on effects of reduced sales will include layoffs and reduced commissions.
Asdrubal Oliveros, director of the Caracas-based Ecoanalitica consulting group, says the problems are symptomatic of Venezuela’s economic crisis.
“It shows the seriousness of Venezuela’s structural crisis, which affects institutions, the economy, security and services,” he said.
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