Venezuela proposes fingerprinting shoppers
Hannah Dreier/ AP
Venezuelans could soon have to scan their fingerprints to buy bread.
President Nicolas Maduro says a mandatory fingerprinting system is being implemented at grocery stores to combat food shortages by keeping people from buying too much of a single item.
He's calling the measure an "anti-fraud system" like the fingerprint scan the country uses for voting.
In announcing the plan late on Wednesday, Maduro did not say when the system would take effect, but other officials suggested it could be in place by December or January.
The move was met with scepticism.
Critics said it was tantamount to rationing and constituted a breach of privacy. Others simply wondered if anything short of a systemic overhaul of the economy could help the socialist South American country's chronically bare shelves.
Venezuela has been grappling with shortages of basic goods like cooking oil and flour for more than a year.
Rigid currency controls and a shortage of US dollars have made it increasingly difficult for shoppers to find imported products.
Price controls don't help either, with producers complaining some goods are priced too low to make a profit and justify production.
The administration blames the shortages both on companies speculating with an eye toward future profits and on black market vendors who buy groceries at subsidised prices and illegally resell them for several times the amount.
As of January, more than a quarter of basic staples were out of stock in Venezuelan stores, according to the central bank's scarcity index.
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