In one of the more telling indicators yet that Guyana’s western neighbour, Venezuela, has fallen on seriously hard times, the country’s President, Nicholas Maduro, announced on Sunday that beginning last Monday, the country officially credited with possessing the single largest reserves of oil anywhere, has set aside its long-standing policy of providing citizens with gasoline at highly subsidised prices.
Long pampered by access to what was reportedly “the world’s cheapest fuel”, consumers, as of last Monday, have been purchasing gasoline at “international market prices” – US$1.90 per gallon.
Setting aside the new additional burden on a country whose economy, in recent years, has declined dramatically, forcing illegal migration to neighbouring countries, Venezuelans will no longer be able to simply take ‘dirt’ cheap gasoline for granted.
‘Rock bottom’ gas prices in Venezuela had triggered a thriving trade in cross-border smuggling to various neighbouring countries, including Guyana, where several miners have benefitted significantly from not having to pursue the considerably more expensive option of moving fuel from the coast into the gold-mining regions of the country.
Maduro is quoted in the media as saying that the significant hike in gas prices in Venezuela signals that a time has come to move towards “a new normality.”
