News Published on 15 Jun, 2009
Now Chávez takes on Tetra Pak in Venezuela
Filed by Bill Bruce
Only a week after Hugo Chávez banned Coke Zero, the Venezuelan president has threatened to ignore international patents and manufacturer Tetra Pak to help reduce the need for imports.
On his weekly Aló Presidente show, Chávez said: “We have aluminium and paper. Why can’t we make that material here? What are patents? That’s universal knowledge. We don’t have to be subject to capitalist laws.”
Venezuela spent $63m in May to import Tetra Pak packaging materials to supply the local market, said Jesse Chacón, science and technology minister.
Chávez targeted overseas packaging suppliers earlier this year, seizing 1,500 hectares of eucalyptus forest that belonged to the Irish packaging company Smurfit Kappa, saying that it should be destined for food rather than cardboard.
Now in its 10th year, Aló Presidente is broadcast every Sunday on state TV. The show begins at 11am and has been known to run for up to five hours.
Chávez, 54, has nationalised the energy, concrete, telecommunications and steel industries as he seeks to construct a socialist state in Venezuela, the largest oil exporter in the Americas. The government has also seized large estates of land to boost agricultural output in an attempt to save hard currency on imports.
The following video is in Spanish …
Source: Bloomberg