Boy, socialists will always set a price that will be less then what it costs to produce. What company would deal with making a loss.
Exactly. These price-setting schemes all end the same...with EMPTY store shelves.
Venezuela has a special kind of way to wreck the economy.
A foreign company selling items in VZ (assuming you can get them imported there before it all rots or becomes obsolete) has to do business in the local currency at the official rate, which is totally artificial. All money transfers like this go through the government, in effect your hard currency is being given to their government, gracias sucker. Then you do your business, if you can, probably have to cut prices deeply and sell them on the black/brown/unofficial market at floating rates.
OK, you have managed to make a tiny bit on widgets, somehow, then you go back to the government to transfer it back into hard currency. No thanks, they say. You are pretty much shafted.
Airlines still operating to Venezuela in the hopes of being paid someday, pennies on the dollar if they are lucky. Companies selling medicine and stuff, shafted.
Did you know there is an acetaminophen shortage in Venezuela?
You see, all importing is done with government permission. Any domestic company that wants to import stuff has to go through a red tape nightmare and all those bribes. Then if the ship actually does come in, it can take weeks or months to unload it. Those ships cost money, even sitting idle.
So basically the government of Venezuela becomes the only importer of food and basic items. They don’t know what they are doing, and there is no real money to keep things on the shelves either. So something is always in shortage, whether it is powdered milk or sanitary pads (you know, wimmin thingies).
So because when things come in and the ship is eventually unloaded, and sometimes they don’t rot in warehouses, they manage to get into the state-run stores there is a mad rush to get them before they are gone.
So the government limits how much you can buy, of course. With soldiers running stores, they want to fingerprint buyers and all sorts of crazy stuff.
Nothing functions properly. Nothing at all.