Reply With Quote
chavez doesn't sound too great IMHO. weird thread le. whatevzz
Chavez Plans to Nationalize Venezuela Cement Industry
By Brian McGee and Steven Bodzin
April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he plans to seize cement operations in the country, threatening the assets of the nation's largest producer, Cemex SAB of Mexico.
``Starting from now, all legal and economic measures should be taken to nationalize the national cement industry in the short term,'' Chavez said in a communications ministry statement.
The move would also affect Lafarge SA of France and Holcim Ltd. of Switzerland. Many cement companies are polluting the environment and have failed to invest in new technology, Chavez said. The state will pay the plant owners ``whatever it costs'' and invest in the modernization of factories, he said.
Chavez has given pro-nationalization speeches to draw on popular Venezuelan opposition to state asset sales to foreign companies in the 1990s. Last year, the state took over four heavy crude oil joint ventures as well as the nation's biggest electricity provider and telephone company. Seizing Total SA's stake in a project cost Venezuela $834 million in oil shipments.
The Venezuelan leader said he would ban asphalt exports and is restricting shipments of food abroad, all part of his effort to overcome shortages amid the fastest economic growth in the Americas. Chavez has accused building-material suppliers of running a monopoly and slowing the construction of homes and roads.
Serious Threat
Cemex is the largest domestic supplier of cement and ready-mix concrete in Venezuela, with annual cement production capacity of 4.6 million tons and 33 ready-mix plans, according to its Web site.
Holcim, the world's second-largest cement maker, is taking the threat ``seriously,'' spokesman Peter Gysel said in a phone interview today. The Swiss company operates two cement plants in Venezuela, one in San Sebastian and another in the arebo region. Together, the factories produce 2.4 million tons and employ more than 500 people.
``We don't know any more than others,'' said Holcim's Gysel. ``We have to wait to see what happens. He said it already several times in the past.''
Lafarge spokeswoman Lucy Saint-Antonin declined to comment on the threat when contacted by Bloomberg today. The French company generates 90 million euros ($141 million) in revenue from Venezuelan operations. Its two plants have the capacity to make 1.6 million tons, or 23 percent of the potential output in the country, Saint-Antonin said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Brian McGee in Madrid at [email protected]; Antonio Ligi in Zurich at [email protected]
Last Updated: April 4, 2008 07:49 EDT
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a1X.Z5a2TM_0&refer=home
Dan, Purple & Gold, boutons, come to the defence of your idol . . .
Last edited by smeagol; 04-04-2008 at 08:57 AM.
chavez doesn't sound too great IMHO. weird thread le. whatevzz
It doesn't sound too great to me too. You missed the sarcasm, dude.
In any case, it was meant to attract the attention of the casual poster . . .
how ironic
Is that like a picture of a guy in a liesure suit relaxing and sipping a drink?
I wonder how long before all these great moves by Chavez
starts show a drop in production.
Don't you know Mexico is just tickled "red" about the
Mexican cement takeover.
Everybody knows cement companies should be run by the government because they excel at it
Yeah baby.......Everybody knows cement companies should be run by the government because they excel at it
I heard Raul Castro is allowing Cubans to buy cell phones and DVDs. They are now also allowed to stay in hotels.
Communism is great!
Chavez is a bad, bad man, but yet these corporation manage to somehow stay in Venezuela and continue to financially support the leftist regime....don't like it? Get out...The Venezuelan leader said he would ban asphalt exports and is restricting shipments of food abroad, all part of his effort to overcome shortages amid the fastest economic growth in the Americas. Chavez has accused building-material suppliers of running a monopoly and slowing the construction of homes and roads.
It's called self-determination...you know, it's when Cubans refuse to support dissidents who continuously call for, actively support, and undermine the people's chosen leaders.....
Translation please. And relevance regarding what I posted.
Thanks.
And, there was no irony.
Only if they want to spend a year's salary to do so.
There, fixed for Oh Gee!!
This is all you got?? Complaining about taking over the cement business??
Come on smeagol you can do better than that. You wanna complain about Chavez why not bring up things a little more important. Human rights abuses/rigging elections/censorship of the press, you know actually things you should be complaining about. Only problem is that happens in all countries regardless of their economic system. U.S./Bush ring a bell??
Seems he wants to take control of infrastructure, cause it's not like companies drag their feet, do shotty jobs, take shortcuts regarding the environment, and steal money when they have government contracts.
This pretty much sums up his thinking:
"Many cement companies are polluting the environment and have failed to invest in new technology, Chavez said. The state will pay the plant owners ``whatever it costs'' and invest in the modernization of factories, he said."
"Chavez has accused building-material suppliers of running a monopoly and slowing the construction of homes and roads."
I really don't see how you can be crying about this. Don't you have something more productive thing to do with your free-time?
This is all you got?? Complaining about taking over the cement business??
Do you pay any attention at all?
I've been complaining about this clown for years now. This is probably the 10th thread I start about another Chavez stupid policy decission.
Wake the up.
Come on smeagol you can do better than that. You wanna complain about Chavez why not bring up things a little more important. Human rights abuses/rigging elections/censorship of the press, you know actually things you should be complaining about.
Again fool. I have complained about all those things too. This is just one more I find amusing and stupid at the same time.
Only problem is that happens in all countries regardless of their economic system. U.S./Bush ring a bell??
Good point
The US is exactly the same as Venezuela.
And as much as I dislike GWB dip , he is light years away from your buddy Chavez when it comes to running a country.
Seems he wants to take control of infrastructure, cause it's not like companies drag their feet, do shotty jobs, take shortcuts regarding the environment, and steal money when they have government contracts.
'Cause the state taking control of enterprises that should be in private hands (TV stations, electricity, cement, Telephony, etc) is obviously the solution.
Almost every country on Earth is doing it
This pretty much sums up his thinking:
"Many cement companies are polluting the environment and have failed to invest in new technology, Chavez said. The state will pay the plant owners ``whatever it costs'' and invest in the modernization of factories, he said."
"Chavez has accused building-material suppliers of running a monopoly and slowing the construction of homes and roads."
And you believe what Chavez says???? What a naiive fool
That is the excuse, dummy.
In your infinite wisdom, tell me what other country controls it's cement industry
Huh? I thought this was a message board intended to debate stuff.I really don't see how you can be crying about this. Don't you have something more productive thing to do with your free-time?
Next time I will consult you regarding the topics I can or cannot start.
Sounds pretty Chavez-like to me
Hey P&G. Here is some more for your I love Chavez scrapbook.
Chavez Health Care Policy.
The Story:
l
http://www.latimes.com/features/heal...,6228532.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Healthcare in Venezuela takes turn for worse
Many public hospitals have fallen on hard times in a nation awash in oil wealth. The childbirth death rate and cases of dengue and malaria are up, and doctors are in short supply.
By Chris Kraul
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 8, 2008
CARACAS, VENEZUELA — Grimacing from contractions, expectant mother Castuca Marino had more on her mind than birth pangs. She was nervous about whether she and her newborn child would make it out of the hospital alive.
Interviewed as she stood in the emergency room of Concepcion Palacios Maternity Hospital here last week, Marino had heard news reports of six infant deaths there over a 24-hour period late last month. She knew that since the beginning of February, six mothers had died in the hospital during or after childbirth.
"What are poor people going to do?" said Marino, 20, as she was being admitted to this sprawling complex where, on average, 60 babies are born a day. "I'm just hoping that there are no complications and that everything goes well."
Palacios, Venezuela's largest public maternity hospital and once the nation's beacon of neonatal care, has fallen on hard times. Half of the anesthesiologists and pediatricians on staff two years ago have quit. Basic equipment such as respirators, ultrasound monitors and incubators are either broken or scarce. Six of 12 birth rooms have been shut.
On one day last month, five newborns were crowded into one incubator, said Dr. Jesus Mendez Quijada, a psychiatrist and Palacios staff member who is a past president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.
The deaths of the six infants "were not a case of bad luck, but the consequence of an ac ulation of cir stances that have created this alarming situation," Mendez said.
He and others say the problems at Concepcion Palacios are symptoms of a variety of ills that have beset the public healthcare system under leftist firebrand President Hugo Chavez. Cases of malaria nearly doubled between 1998, the year before Chavez took office, and 2007. Incidents of dengue fever more than doubled over the same period.
Poorly paid doctors regularly demonstrate at hospitals from Puerto La Cruz in the northeast to Maracay in the industrial heartland, demanding back pay and protesting the lack of equipment and supplies. Others are leaving in droves for Spain, Australia or the Middle East, where they make 10 times the $600 monthly average salary they earn in public hospitals.
Venezuela's healthcare system was facing problems even before Chavez took office. The system has been riven with corruption, mismanagement and disorganization for decades. In addition, tropical conditions have made the country ripe for epidemics difficult for any government to control. An encephalitis outbreak in 1996 sickened 20,000 people.
But the system's current crisis comes as the country is awash in oil wealth, a windfall that critics say could be used to ease the problem. Instead, Chavez is building a parallel health program called Barrio Adentro, which features 11,000 neighborhood clinics staffed mainly by Cuban doctors.
Inaugurated nationwide in 2003, Barrio Adentro initially was so popular with the poor that it helped Chavez win a crucial 2004 referendum and hold on to power. It has brought basic healthcare to the barrios, providing free exams and medicine as well as eye operations that have saved the sight of thousands.
But the system siphons resources and equipment away from the public hospitals, which have four-fifths of the nation's 45,000 hospital beds and where the public still goes for emergency and maternity care, as well as for most major and elective surgeries.
The finances and organization of Barrio Adentro are "a black box and not transparent, so it's impossible to analyze it for efficiency," said Dr. Marino Gonzalez, professor of public policy at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, the capital.
A lack of openness has affected other facets of public health too. After the medical establishment blamed him for an outbreak of dengue fever last summer, Chavez halted weekly publication of an epidemiology report that for 50 years had tallied occurrences of infectious diseases nationwide.
Former Health Minister Rafael Orihuela says the loss of the weekly report has deprived the government of information needed for a quick response to outbreaks of disease.
"I am not talking about a failure of the government to adopt innovations in healthcare," said Orihuela, a Chavez critic. "I am talking about a failure to maintain basic healthcare standards."
Chavez has also been accused of appointing cronies to manage public health. Efforts to arrange an interview with Minister of Popular Power for Health Jesus Mantilla, who served with Chavez in the military, were unsuccessful last week.
Politics and polarization fuel the healthcare debate. Depending on who is speaking, Venezuela is either suffering from the pangs of a new dawn in socialist healthcare or from the monumental incompetence of top-level bureaucrats.
But even government officials acknowledge the public health system in recent months has been on the verge of collapse, evidenced by problems in maternity and postnatal care.
Since the mid-1990s, the death rate of women giving birth has risen 18%, to 59 in every 100,000 deliveries, according to UNICEF. That's four times the rate in Chile. Venezuela's infant mortality rate of 18 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2007 was down from 20.5 in 1998, but still double the rate of Chile and higher than other Latin American countries such as Colombia, Uruguay and Costa Rica.
Gonzalez, the university professor, fears that the situation could get worse because maternity hospitals such as Concepcion Palacios are having increasing difficulty finding young pediatricians to pursue neonatal specialty training due to low pay and lack of resources.
"It's not that before Chavez things were great," he said. "It's that things have deteriorated."
[email protected]
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
TMS Reprints
Article licensing and reprint options
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times
I also read somewhere that Chavez wants to change Venezuela's high school's curriculum to include teaching kids how to use a bow and arrow, wrestling, canooing, throughing rocks with a sling, use of a pop-gun, etc.
Yes, that Chavez is a great guy!
Yep, he's so great, the democrats want our nation to follow his lead!
Well now he wants the steel industry. Got to love it, he
doesn't discriminate. He just wants it all.
Picked on Mexico now Argentina
The sad thing is, our government couldn't give two s about this because they're too busy kissing Chavez' ass for oil. Its ing pathetic. I still can't believe we elected this 's incompetent ass to begin with! I swear, I'm moving as soon as I can out of this ing country.
which is different from the guvment how....drag their feet, do shotty jobs, take shortcuts , and steal money
I lived outside of Argentina for 9 years and something pulled me back. Not sure what it was because this country is full of idiots and most of them are in the government . . .
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
