beyondbrics

Not for the first time, Hugo Chávez today threatened to nationalise the country’s largest remaining privately owned company, food and drink giant Polar. He raised the stakes a bit, too, by declaring “economic war” against the “bourgeoisie” at the same time.

Can he really be serious? To be fair, for Venezuela’s pugnacious leader, this is pretty standard fare. But, increasingly, people are beginning to wonder whether he might actually take the plunge, and grab Polar.

Certainly, his hand never wavered when it came to nationalising companies in sectors as diverse as oil, cement, banking, farming, electricity and telecoms. But most analysts have always argued that Polar is likely to be safe from government intervention, for the simple reason that it is such an important player in the food and drink industries, things that Venezuelans hold so very dearly – particularly beer (Polar is far and away Venezuela’s biggest beer producer, and Mr Chávez recently even mused that he would shut down the beer factory altogether). If the government slipped up in running the company, as some suspect it might, this would dent its popularity – and the government knows this all too well, goes the reasoning.

That was before the Bolivarian revolution had neutered so much of the rest of the private sector, perhaps. Of the powerful private entities remaining (and few question Mr Chávez’s taste for centralised power, although sometimes he likes to talk of the importance of “strategic” sectors under state control), Polar is the pick of the bunch. And with food shortages causing the government such discomfort at the moment, it would be a good excuse to go for it.

The problem would be if the shortages persisted (or, heaven forbid, got worse), as Mr Chávez would no longer find it so easy to blame them on the “coup-mongering oligarchy”, as he has preferred to do until now. Then the emperor really would look naked.

Related reading:
Why Chávez’s nationalisation plan could backfire, FT beyondbrics