By Jorge Rueda and Frank Bajak, Associated Press, June 4, 2013

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP)--In a sign Venezuela's food shortages could be worsening, restrictions on the sale of 20 basic items including toilet paper and chicken subject to price controls are set to begin next week in its most populous state, officials said Tuesday.

A national government spokesman said it is incorrect to call the plan rationing because its intent is to fight contraband on the Colombian border. He said there are no plans to extend the program nationally.

How exactly the system in Zulia state will work is still being determined, said Blagdimir Labrador, the state governor's chief of staff. The spokesman said details are still being worked out.

Zulia will issue computer chip cards beginning next week that will limit consumer purchases of products that will also include rice, flour, cooking oil, sugar and powdered milk, he said. The quantities each family will be allowed to buy, on a daily or weekly basis, have not yet been determined and will be set by the time the scheme is implemented, Labrador added.

The system will register purchases remotely on computer servers "so the same person can't go to a different store on the same day and purchase the same product," he said.

It appears to be the first time food has been rationed in Venezuela. Communist-run Cuba has issued monthly ration cards for basic foodstuffs for decades, though the number of items has dwindled in recent years.

Labrador said that to begin with, the system will apply to 65 supermarkets in two cities, Maracaibo and San Francisco, in the state bordering Colombia.

It was unclear, however, how the system would prevent different members from the same family from beating the system through separate purchases.

Authorities said the measure was a response to food-smuggling to neighboring Colombia.

To fight gasoline-smuggling to Colombia, Zulia and another border state, Tachira, have imposed in the past two years a computer-chip system for gasoline purchases. It does not appear to have stemmed the cross-border smuggling of heavily-subsidized Venezuelan gasoline.

Many economists are similarly skeptical that limiting food purchases, or rationing, can end worsening shortages of basic foodstuffs that Venezuelans generally blame on government mismanagement.

For one, price controls for more than 100 items imposed more than a decade ago under the late President Hugo Chavez are regularly ignored in all but state-run markets. Merchants say adhering to them would be suicidal for their businesses given inflation that reached a 29.4 percent annual rate in April.

Venezuela competes with Argentina in the Americas among major nations for the dubious distinction of most troubled economy. In both nations, currency controls and a deepening shortage of dollars are widely blamed for economic turmoil.

An economist at Andres Bello University, Ronald Balza, said he doesn't see how rationing certain foodstuffs can address what is causing shortages.

"The reason for shortages (in Zulia) is the same as it is in the rest of the country: fixed prices, supply problems and the preventative purchases that consumers make every time new prices are coming."

Opposition economists accuse Chavez of looting the Treasury in order to spread largesse and win re-election last October.

By Fabiola Sanchez, Associated Press, July 20, 2012 CARACAS, Venezuela (AP)--As home to the world's cheapest gasoline, Venezuela has long had to contend with the hemorrhaging of supplies as smugglers haul gas across the border to cash in where the fuel costs far more.

In neighboring Colombia, drivers pay 40 times as much as Venezuelans to tank up--$1.25 a liter ($4.73 a gallon), compared to 3 U.S. cents a liter (11 cents a gallon).

So much gasoline is being taken out of Venezuela illegally that President Hugo Chavez's socialist government imposed rationing on motorists in one state bordering Colombia last year, and now it's touched off a furor in a second border state by announcing it will ration gasoline there, too.

"We transport workers are not to blame for this scourge," said Olivio Fernandez, a bus driver in Maracaibo, which is Venezuela's second-largest city with 2 million inhabitants. It's also the capital of Zulia state, where the expanded rationing is planned and where Chavez planned a Saturday visit for his re-election campaign.

Drivers will have microchip-embedded stickers affixed to their windshields to regulate purchases, just as motorists have been required to do in neighboring Tachira state for the past year.

Rationing in Tachira, home of the busiest Colombia-Venezuela border crossing, varies with a motor vehicle's size, location and use. Private automobiles in the border town of San Cristobal are limited to buying no more than 42 liters (11 gallons) a day, for example, while buses are limited to 150 liters (40) gallons.

Oil analysts say the new rationing may indicate something graver than a contraband problem, noting the anger-inducing plan was announced in an opposition-dominated state just three months before the presidential election. The measure could mean that production and refining troubles are worsening in the less-than-transparent state-run petroleum industry, the analysts say.