(Note here that this is a total government ownership of the means of
production for telephone services versus the state capitalist and profit
making model that is quite often used by exotic populist, bonapartist, and
non-socialist Hugo of Venezuela. On the other hand partial private ownership
remains for gas in Bolivia. Perhaps Hugo should look to Bolivia to see how
it is really done--at least for telephone service. He might also look to
Israel where government ownership and operation of key hospitals is another
example of how it should be done. MG)
http://www.miamiher
Posted on Fri, May. 02, 2008
Morales nationalizes telecom, gas companies
By CAROLOS VALDEZ
President Evo Morales celebrated May Day by announcing
the nationalization of Bolivia's leading telecommunications company,
Entel, and returning four foreign-owned natural gas companies to state
control.
Morales said his government would take ''absolute control from this
moment on'' of the former state telephone company, in which Telecom
Italia owns a 50 percent share.
Morales announced plans to buy back Entel last year, but negotiations
with Telecom Italia have dragged out. Following Thursday's decree,
Bolivian police were dispatched to guard Entel offices in La Paz and the
eastern city of Santa Cruz.
''Basic services -- call them energy, water or communications -- cannot
be in the hands of private business. They're public services,'' Morales
told a crowd outside the presidential palace during celebrations of
international workers' day.
Terms of the nationalization are not immediately clear, though Morales
said the company's employees would keep their jobs.
Morales also announced the return to state control of four former pieces
of Bolivia's state energy company YPFB, which was privatized during the
1990s. He had announced plans for that move when he declared the
nationalization of Bolivia's oil and gas sector on May Day 2006.
The president said he has signed an agreement to purchase a majority
share in the gas production company Andina from Spanish company Repsol
YPF.
Hydrocarbons Minister Carlos Villegas said the deal gives YPFB, long a
bit player in its own country, an active role in Bolivia's two largest
gas fields, San Alberto and San Antonio.
Morales commended Repsol as the ''symbol of a business that negotiates''
-- while announcing the nationalization of three other foreign-owned
energy companies that failed to work out a deal before his April 30
deadline.
Gas production company Chaco, controlled by British Petroleum; the
pipeline company Transredes, controlled by the Houston-based Ashmore
Energy International, and German-Peruvian owned distribution company CLBH
will all be returned to state control.
Terms of the nationalizations were not immediately available.
Bolivia privatized the struggling Entel in 1995, handing 50 percent of
the company to Stet International in exchange for the Italian company's
promise to invest $608 million to modernize its services. Stet later
merged with Telecom Italia.
Telecom Italia says it has spent more than that to build Bolivia's
largest cellphone and Internet networks while maintaining a commanding
share of the now-deregulated telecommunications sector.
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez ordered the expropriation of
Venezuela's largest steel maker after attempts by the government to
acquire a majority stake in the company failed. Chávez said iderurgica
del Orinoco, which was controlled by Luxembourg-based Ternium, will
become ``a socialist company.
Sidor, as the company is known, ''has now recuperated by the
revolutionary government,'
Since winning reelection in 2006 on promises to steer his country toward
socialism, Chávez has made nationalizing major industries a top
priority.
His government last year seized majority control of the country's largest
telecommunications and electricity companies, and of joint oil ventures
run by some of the world's largest oil companies.
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