Hard to find bread in shortage-stricken Venezuela

Caracas

AT A popular east Caracas bakery, customers can buy Spanish olive oil, Italian tomato sauce and even American chocolates. But bread? Forget it.

Cardboard signs on the door warning of "No bread" have become increasingly common at Venezuelan bakeries.

Venezuela gets 96 per cent of its foreign currency from oil exports, and as crude prices have plunged, so have the country's imports - among them wheat.

The leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro has tightly controlled access to hard currency, and this has affected imports ranging from medicine to toilet paper. Now, it is seriously affecting imports of wheat, which Venezuela does not grow.

Add to this the soaring inflation rate - 181 per cent in 2015, the world's highest - and you see why customers are mainly intere…