Caracas. The Venezuelan government announced yesterday that it has launched a project that aims to recover the steel needed by the construction industry from the scrapping of old vehicles abandoned on the street or at car wreckers.
During a visit to a scrap car yard just outside Caracas, Maria Martinez, deputy justice minister, said that "10.485 cars, 9651 motorcycles and 539 bicycles" had already been sent to the steel industries.
The steel obtained from the scrap will be mainly used to make the bars which form the internal structure of the reinforced concrete. In the years of Chavez the whole country, and in particular the major urban centres, was a single large open construction site, in homage to one of the most popular guidelines of the socialist leader's policy: to carry out the "great mission" of housing to all those who cannot afford it.
Until 2012, tens of thousands of homes were built from scratch or renovated for the homeless or low-income families. In the last year, however, the great mission has considerably slowed down its marching pace and the present government makes it a point of honor to give it new impetus. One of the reasons for the crisis affecting the building industry lies precisely in the decreased production of steel, used in construction to reinforce the concrete.
In March of this year, the production of steel bars achieved the worst result in the last 18 years: 8800 tons, against 46.000 in March 2013. The drop in production does not depend on a shortage of plants, Venezuela in fact boasts steel mills first rate, such as the Sidor factories, which have a production capacity of five million tons of bars per year.
The contraction in production, particularly accentuated in the last year, began with the nationalization of the steel companies in 2008 and is mainly due to the lack of investment in the sector.
Despite its specificities, on the other hand, the crisis of the Venezuelan steel industry is reflected in the difficulties faced by the once flourishing metallurgical companies of other South American countries.
