It might sound funny but toilet paper is not a necessity that you can ignore. Venezuela stumbled from one crisis to another as the markets ran out of one good after another. They were trying to cope with the shortage of daily products like cornmeal, milk and butter when suddenly news about the toilet paper shortage spread. People flocked to the supermarkets to buy toilet papers for future use leading to great chaos. As usual the Socialist governing party is blaming it all on the opposition but they are also responsible for this disaster. Their promise of importing 50 million rolls of toilet paper did not calm the worried populace. Venezuela has been through financial troubles of different types and getting medicines and daily food items have been difficult even before but running out of a basic necessity like toilet paper is the height of deprivation that a country can face.
The people of Venezuela are particularly worried about this shortage because this has never happened before. According to the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, the opponents of the Socialist government have joined hands with the private sectors to create acute scarcity of most important and basic daily goods in an attempt to disrupt political stability. The economists, however, have presented a totally different theory. According to their calculations the Socialist government has forced major price controlling methods into the economy which has led this disaster. Just importing toilet paper rolls won’t solve the deep rooted problems. Price controls were meant to tackle the economical troubles they have been suffering from 2003. But it seems that the whole plan has boomeranged and now they are going to be challenged soon by inflation due to commodity crisis.
The people of Venezuela have become used to political tensions and shortage of daily necessities. From the beginning of Hugo Chavez’s rein economical strains became apparent. It was Hugo Chavez who chose Maduro as his successor. Last month he won and took charge of the presidential office. Political riots had spread out during the time of election and many died due to it. Controlled prices for daily commodities are infamous for their capacity for bringing goods shortage. It has been observed in other nations and economies before. The Commerce Minister, Alejandro Fleming, has told the media that the monthly consumption of toilet paper has increased suddenly. Approximately 125 million toilet paper rolls were used but now due to the sudden scarcity they have to import over 40 million more rolls of toilet paper. $79 million credit has been approved by the National Assembly of Venezuela. Hopefully this would help in resolving the issue very soon.
