The Ministry of Food of Venezuela has taken an important decision: No private company could import milk powder to Venezuela and only could do it with the licenses granted to date. These licenses have been approved in the month of October and from now on, the only entity authorized to import milk is the Corporation CASA, which will distribute the product to the private companies.
The consequence is that the only importer of milk powder, until further notice, will be CASA. Obviously there will be the import licenses that were granted in October, but they will not be of great magnitude.
This decision was taken because, in previous months, the milk reached levels of almost $ S $ 3000 by Fonterra (private milk exporter to Venezuela). The industrialists, due to a question of prices, declined to buy the imported milk by the state because its national sales value is 20.50 Bolivares a kilo, that divided Bs U $ S 4.30 (in the official market) would be U $ S 4.76 per kilo. Obviously it was better to import and the State did not measure the volume of private licenses granted beside with the volume of purchases made by the State exceeded the 16,000 tons permonth consumed by the industry.
The decision of the Ministry of Food of Venezuela resulted in increased prices of the milk that the State imported to the Industrial and the placement in the market, that are still coming out of these inventories, which are expected to be leveled for the month of December.
It is expected that such decisions, the State of Venezuela probably will intervene the milk market.
Source: Lechería Latina
