Venezuela To Put Household Goods Price Caps Into Effect March 1
11 Februar 2012 - 12:20AM
Dow Jones News
Venezuela will put its cost regulations on a series of selected
food, household goods and personal care products into effect March
1, Vice President Elias Jaua said Friday.
As part of its Law of Fair Prices and Costs, Venezuela's leftist
government in recent months began an evaluation of companies' cost
structures to determine "just," state-set prices for their
products. The initiative, launched by President Hugo Chavez, is
partly an effort to control one of the world's highest inflation
rates and aims to set prices for goods across economic sectors as
well as establish "reasonable" profits for the companies that
produce them.
The government began in November by freezing the prices of 19
items, mostly personal-hygiene and household-cleaning products, but
has delayed the release of the new government-mandated prices.
Chavez has warned that companies failing to comply with the
regulations may have property expropriated.
On Friday, Jaua said companies will be notified of the price
caps soon and will have the ability to appeal against them.
"We haven't altered the value of the recognized costs that [the
companies] presented to us," Jaua said, according to state news
agency AVN. Instead, the government will no longer allow companies
to factor items like income tax into how much they eventually
charge for their products, said Jaua.
Companies that face audits include local units of multinationals
like Colgate-Palmolive Co. (CL), PepsiCo Inc. (PEP), H.J. Heinz Co.
(HNZ), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Unilever PLC (UL, ULVR.LN) and
Nestle SA (NSRGY, NESN.VX), as well as local food distributor and
packager Alimentos Polar.
Chavez, who is seeking re-election this October, has said
rampant speculation in the private sector is responsible for the
country's notoriously high inflation, which stood at an annualized
rate of 26% in January.
On Thursday, Chavez gave a preview of some of the new state-set
prices, announcing a 50% cut in the price of a Coca-Cola Femsa SAB
(KOF, KOF.MX) brand five-liter package of bottled water and a 24%
cut in the price of a deodorant marketed by Procter & Gamble
Co. (PG).
-By Kejal Vyas and Ezequiel Minaya, Dow Jones Newswires;
58-414-249-6821; kejal.vyas@dowjones.com
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