One of the nice things about having faithful readers, is that I sort of get copies of videos, documents and papers (like this one) making sure that I seldom miss important stuff. Sure I get stuff twice or even more times, but it is an incredible source of information, so thank you all. Once in a while, readers write to tell me stories, many of which I would not know about in detail if it were not for them. Sometimes, these become a post. This is one of them.

Chavismo thinks that it can hide incompetence and inefficiency. But modern tools are pretty incredible. Chavismo also seems to believe that it can do anything, run any enterprise. Their infinite belief in the power of the State and their own ability is simply scary. Take imports. In its war against the private sector Chávez began importing stuff from all over, just to bypass the local private sector. In his mind, if there is no toilet paper, or corn, or wheat, it is just a matter of importing the stuff and magically, it will show up in the shelves of local stores.

Except in reality, the path is an extreme adventure in inefficiency. It starts with how much is paid for the stuff, as there are bribes and commissions at each step. Then, there is the problem of what to bring. Some bureaucrat in Caracas decides to import paper towels and corn and, in a few weeks, people are using the towels in lieu of toilet paper and making corn bread because there is no wheat.

Except that it is not even that easy, because to get stuff from say, Brazil, to the Venezuelan consumer, the stuff has to go through the Puerto Cabello Bermuda-like triangle, where ships don’t disappera, but they do get lost for a while:

You see the port responds to the whims of Chavismo, as it is run by Bolipuertos, which is 49% owned by Asport, the Cuban port authority. This is not an easy fact to dig out, as they try to hide it deep in the webpages, but go to slide 22 of this page, and it is clearly spelled out.

This means that if it is May Day, like yesterday, many of the dock workers are bussed to Caracas to participate in the Maduro march. That means tough traffic to get in and out of the port, little unloading and almost no cargo going in or out.

But Puerto Cabello is like a Bermuda triangle, where ships get lost in time, as they arrive, spend weeks and months waiting and then too much time unloading. And time, my friends, means cost and money for everyone involved.

What my friend and reader taught me (let’s call him DD) is that in the maritime world you can’t hide. Each ship carries an AIS (Automatic Identification System) which is sort like the black box that airplanes have, allowing all ships to be tracked. There are websites like this one or this one, where you can follow each step of what is going on. I actually subscribed to the first one for a while ,so I could go back 60 days and follow the ships. In fact, you can even add alerts to keep track of ships.

This, for example, is an overview of the part of the Caribbean where Puerto Cabello is from the first site I linked to:

The first thing you note is how much movement and density of ships there is near Aruba and Curacao (Ships moving look like little arrows, rather than diamonds, which are vessels that are not moving), while around Venezuela everything is so static. (If you go to the webpage, you can even tell how fast the ship is moving by putting your mouse on it). Obviously, comparing the size of the three economies, you would expect much more movement and density around Puerto Cabello. But such are the ways of the revolution…

In fact, you can zoom in and see how little movement there is inside the port itself (Colors are what type of ship it is, tanker, (red), cargo (green), passenger (blue), etc.):

You can dig even deeper, blowing up the port to the level of street detail, if you know the port, then you know where the grain elevators are, for example. Thus, if you know your stuff, you can tell what type of ship is at each spot, even if the system tells you most of the time.

Here is a detailed picture of what was going on in Puerto Cabello, yesterday May 2nd. 2015:

In fact, you can click on any of the ships and you can get all sorts of information on each ship. For example, if you click on the second green ship below the point in the middle, you get this window:

Note that you can check out the vessel’s track, history, itinerary. And in vessel details you can get even more pictures and find out this ship came from Norfolk Virginia, for example. If you are subscribed, then you can see when it arrived in Puerto Cabello, when it went to port and the like.

And here is where you find that Puerto Cabello has become almost like the Bermuda triangle: Companies send ships in, but they never know when they will come back. First, they arrive at port and have to wait for weeks, sometimes months, to get into the port to unload the cargo. As an example, last November, the 27th. to be exact, the M/V UBC Toronto left New Orleans loaded with corn. The trip takes about 8 days. Thus, it should have arrived in Puerto Cabello around December 8th., the 9th., at most.

Well, on February 24th. this ship was still sitting in the same spot outside Puerto Cabello, waiting to be unloaded. We are talking more than seventy days later! It finally left Venezuela at the end of March (I did not follow its course and my subscription expired!), arriving back in the States on April 9th. that is a four month trip, for something that should only take three weeks, two traveling and one unloading.

This not only costs money, days inside the port cost on average US$ 15,000 per day, but think about it, this ship was loaded with corn at a time that Venezuelans are experiences shortages in Harina Pan to make their arepas!

Chavista management is clearly an oxymoron…

There was another ship, which arrived right before last Christmas, which was unable to go into port to unload until after two weeks anchored at sea. Well, this ship was still in Puerto Cabello unloading at the end of February, more than 8 weeks later. And it did not leave until the first week in March, which means that at $16,000 per day for roughly 60 days, the trip cost an additional US$ 960,000 for the trip.

Guess who pays for this?

So add it all up. In most of the world, workers unload, on average, about 5,000 Tons per day, from a vessel with peak rates of about 10,000 Tons in very efficient operations. In Venezuela, with luck, you may get to 1,000 Tons per day, but rates can be about half that much. This adds costs from US$ 10,000 per day, all the way up to US$ 20,000 per day, for up to two or three months. Given that a shipment may be worth US$ 10 to 12 million, this becomes a very expensive proposition. (Not to mention graft, overprice, commissions and the like)

Add it all up. This is the cost of the ports being under the inefficient Chavista management, under the advise of Cuban consultants, which not only charge for it, but turn out to own 49% of the company running the ports (They probably paid nothing for it). And, of course, being in charge of the port is juicy business, with Generals or whatever their rank may be, fighting for the top spot regularly (Last year, the port had four different Heads, with each new one requiring to learn the job from scratch, They probably never did, except to learn at which step you could charge something)

There are many other stories surrounding this. DD told me how a ship used in the oil business, costs about US$ 400,000 per day rental, US$ 230,000 if not in use. Just bringing it to Venezuela, if it is in Europe, for example, costs about US$ 2 million. Well, one such ship was brought to Venezuela last year from Europe. By the end of March it was still there, sitting around, doing nothing.

Chavista inefficiency at its best!

Meanwhile, maritime operators tremble at the thought of having to send a vessel to Puerto Cabello. It is the Bermuda triangle backwards. Your ship always disappears when it goes into the area, you just don’t know when it will reappear!

And these guys think hey can keep doing this!

(Thanks to DD for the tip and the info)

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