Chavez nationalizes iron, steel companies!!!

CARACAS: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that the government would nationalize several iron and steel companies in the country to pave way for a large "socialist" state-run enterprise.

"There is nothing to discuss. We've been on this for a long time," Chavez said in a televised address, ordering the beginning of "a process of nationalization to create an industrial complex," but without providing details of the venture.

Chavez named Matesi, Consigua, Ceramicas Carabobo, steel tube maker Tavsa, as well as Orinoco Iron and Venprecar, subsidiaries of Venezuelan-owned International Briquettes Holding (IBH), which exports iron briquettes.

The announcement is the start of a "transition" so that these companies can become the "solid platform of socialism," he said.

"Venezuelan workers are going to give a lesson to the world on how the working class has been resuscitated to make a revolution!" he told industry workers in the western state of Bolivar.

The workers stood and sang the national anthem.

Since 2007, the Venezuelan government has moved ahead with the nationalization of a wide range of companies from telecommunications, electricity, cement and oil sectors.

Two weeks ago, the Chavez administration expropriated 39 oil service providers, some backed by foreign capital, after the government passed a law extending the state's control over all activities related to the industry.

According to the government's official journal, Venezuelan Petroleum (PDVSA) and affiliated firms took "control of operation and the immediate possession of institutions, documentation, goods and equipment" of the 39 firms.

Many of the firms were subsidiaries of foreign businesses.

Venezuela's National Assembly passed a law on May 7 that "reserves for the state, the goods and services connected to primary hydrocarbon activities."

"We will start to recover assets that will now belong to the state, as they always should have," Chavez said at the time.

Chavez earlier Thursday pressed for his country's energy industry to wrest free of outside interests, symbolically seizing an American gas facility appropriated by the government earlier this month.

Chavez declared that "a new stage" had begun for his country as he strolled through the PIGAP II gas compression facility operated by the Oklahoma-based Williams Co.

Latin America's largest energy-producing nation, Venezuela announced it would take control of Williams's operations in early May when the Chavez government seized the assets of 60 local and foreign-owned oil firms.

source: The Himalayan Times