Shortages in Venezuela of regulated food staples and basic necessities have been widespread following the enactment of price controls and other policies under the government of Hugo Chávez and exacerbated by the policy of withholding United States dollars from importers under the government of Nicolás Maduro. The severity of the shortages has led to the largest refugee crisis ever recorded in the Americas. The Venezuelan government's denial of the crisis and its refusal to accept offers of aid from Amnesty International, the United Nations, and other groups has made conditions even worse. The United Nations and the Organization of American States have stated that the shortages have resulted in unnecessary deaths in Venezuela and urged the government to accept humanitarian aid.
There are shortages of milk, meat, coffee, rice, oil, precooked flour, butter, toilet paper, personal hygiene products and medicines. By January 2017, the shortage of medicines reached 85%, according to the Pharmaceutical Federation of Venezuela (Federación Farmacéutica de Venezuela). Hours-long lines have become common, and those who wait in them are sometimes disappointed. Some Venezuelans have resorted to eating wild fruit and garbage.
On 9 February 2018 a group of United Nations Special Procedures and the Special Rapporteurs on food, health, adequate housing and extreme poverty issued a joint statement on Venezuela that partly read, "Vast numbers of Venezuelans are starving, deprived of essential medicines, and trying to survive in a situation that is spiraling downwards with no end in sight". Maduro has stated that "Venezuela is not a country of famine. It has very high levels of nutrients and access to food".
Since the 1990s, food production in Venezuela has dropped continuously, with Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian government beginning to rely upon imported food using the country's then-large oil profits. In 2003, the government created CADIVI (now CENCOEX), a currency control board charged with handling foreign exchange procedures to control capital flight by placing currency limits on individuals. Such currency controls have been determined to be the cause of shortages according to many economists and other experts. However, the Venezuelan government blamed other entities such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and smugglers for shortages, and has stated that an "economic war" had been declared on Venezuela.
During the presidency of Chávez, Venezuela faced occasional shortages owing to high inflation and government financial inefficiencies. In 2005, Chávez announced the initiation of Venezuela's own "great leap forward", following the example of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward. An increase in shortages began to occur that year as 5% of items became unavailable according to the Central Bank of Venezuela. In January 2008, 24.7% of goods were reported to be unavailable in Venezuela, with the scarcity of goods remaining high until May 2008, when there was a shortage of 16.3% of goods. However, shortages increased again in January 2012 to nearly the same rate as in 2008.
President Hugo Chávez' policies relied heavily on oil revenues to fund large quantities of imports. Production under Chávez dropped because of his price control policies and poorly managed expropriations. His successor, Nicolás Maduro, continued most of Chávez' policies until they became unsustainable. When oil profits began declining in 2014, Maduro began limiting imports needed by Venezuelans and shortages began to grow. Foreign reserves, usually saved for economic distress, were being spent to service debt and to avoid default, instead of being used to purchase imported goods. Domestic production, which had already been damaged by government policies, was unable to replace the necessary imported goods.
According to economist Ángel Alayón, "the Venezuelan government has direct control over food distribution in Venezuela" and the movement of all food, even among private companies, is controlled by the government. Alayón states the problem is not distribution, however, but production since "nobody can distribute what is not produced". Expropriations by the government resulted in a drop in production in Venezuela. According to Miguel Angel Santos, a researcher at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, as a result of expropriations of private means of production since 2004, "production was destroyed", while a "wave of consumption based on imports" occurred when Venezuela had abundant oil money. With poor production and a dependence on imports, the drop of oil prices beginning in 2014 made it impossible for the government to import necessary goods for Venezuelans.
There was an 80–90% shortage rate of milk (powdered and liquid), margarine, butter, sugar, beef, chicken, pasta, cheese, corn flour, wheat flour, oil, rice, coffee, toilet paper, diapers, laundry detergent, bar soap, bleach, dish, shampoo and soap toilet in February 2015. In March 2016, it was estimated that 87% of Venezuelans were consuming less due to the shortages. There was a 50% to 80% rate of food shortages, and 80% of medicines were in short supply or unavailable. By December 2016, 78% of Venezuelans had lost weight due to lack of food. By February 2017, the Venezuela's Living Conditions Survey, managed by a multi-university organization in Venezuela, reported that about 75% of Venezuelans had lost weight in 2016. The survey had also stated that 83% of Venezuelans were living in poverty, 93% could no longer afford food and that one million Venezuelan school children did not attend classes "due to hunger and a lack of public services".
Amnesty International, the United Nations and other groups have offered aid to Venezuela. The Venezuelan government has declined such assistance, however, with Delcy Rodriguez denying Venezuela faced a humanitarian crisis. Venezuelans in other countries often organize benefits for those living in Venezuela, collecting products and shipping them to those they trust there. Experts say that due to the extreme state of shortages, it is necessary for many international family members to send essentials to their families.
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