Venezuela car owners unfazed by planned fuel hike

[unhappycamper]

http://www.adn.com/2013/12/21/3242109/venezuela-car-owners-unfazed-by.html



This Friday, Dec. 20, 2013 photo shows a 1980 Mercury Zephyr parked in a taxi rest area in Caracas, Venezuela. Unlike the well-maintained 1950s-era American automobiles that grace the socialist streets of Havana, Cuba, Maduro’s staunchest ally, there’s nothing majestic about Venezuelans’ love affair with its steel behemoths. Most of the cars are clunkers, Dodge Chargers and Chevy Malibus from a bygone era many Americans would just assume forget.

Venezuela car owners unfazed by planned fuel hike
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ and JORGE RUEDA
The Associated Press
December 21, 2013 Updated 7 minutes ago

CARACAS, Venezuela — Owners of the 1970s-era gas guzzling trucks and sedans that have long reigned over Caracas' smog-filled roadways will soon have to pay a bit more to keep flaunting their energy-inefficient monsters.

As an economic crisis drains government coffers, President Nicolas Maduro is putting motorists on notice and taking on one of the nation's biggest sacred cows: nearly free gasoline. With cut-rate prices for fuel, Venezuelans have never felt compelled to buy smaller, more environment-friendly vehicles like motorists in many other countries, often favoring decades-old clunkers or newer SUVs.

Prices at Venezuelan gas pumps have been frozen for almost 20 years with politicians hesitant to repeat the mistake of rising prices in 1989, triggering days of deadly rioting. The late President Hugo Chavez once confessed it pained him to practically give away fuel to luxury car owners, but during 14 years of rule he never dared to touch the gasoline subsidy that consumes upward of $12.5 billion a year in government income.

But all good things must come to an end. For Venezuelan motorists, to whom cheap gas is something of a birthright and fuel efficiency a foreign concept, that means having to pay more than the 5 cents a gallon that gas currently costs at the official exchange rate, or less than a penny at the widely-used black market rate.

[Festivito]

1. $0.01 to $0.05 per gallon. 1-5 CENTS per gallon of gas! Yikes.

I think it was 25 cents 25 years ago.

I think the cost should be brought in line with the cost of roads, pollution, and health care costs alongside the cost of pulling it out of the ground and refining. That price needs to go up dudes.

[HooptieWagon]

2. I visited Venezuela about 20 years ago, pre-Chavez.

While there, there was an increase in fuel prices went into effect, from $.04/gal to $.06/gallon. People were pretty unhappy, and the National Airline went on strike... not the employees, the airline itself. I managed to get a ride from Puerto LaCruz to Caracas with a magazine publisher friend...which was an adventure itself.