CARACAS: Venezuela’s western border is a smuggler’s paradise, The most lucrative trade of all is in petrol, Venezuela’s energy minister, Rafael Ramírez, reckons the equivalent of 100,000 barrels a day of oil is smuggled out of the country.
The cause is a battery of state subsidies and price controls in place in Venezuela, which also maintains a heavily overvalued currency. Petrol in Venezuela is so cheap that an entire 50-litre (11-gallon) car-tank can be filled for well under $1, or less than six cents at the black-market rate. Over the border, gasoline costs about $1.20 a litre. The government says it loses to smuggling 40% of the subsidised food that it supplies to state-owned grocery stores. The economic impact runs to several billion dollars a year.
Venezuela began nightly closures of its 2,200km (1,400-mile) border with Colombia. Heavy-goods traffic in the border area is now banned for 11 hours a day, starting at 6pm. The army says it has deployed 17,000 troops to enforce the blockade.
The most visible effect so far has been to create lengthy queues at official border crossings, particularly between the Venezuelan state of Táchira and the Colombian department of Norte de Santander, where the frontier region is heavily populated on both sides. Many live in one country and work in the other. Venezuelans increasingly seek medical attention over the border.
Colombia has criticised the “unilateral” measure. Locals are divided. Colombian producers and retailers struggle to compete with contraband goods, and many have gone bust. But some complain that they were not consulted and that the border closure will do more harm than good. Trade between the two countries was already down by one-fifth in the first half of this year according to Cavecol, a binational chamber of commerce.
