Bolivia: Public transport strike due to the increase of the costs of fuel

December 27, 2010

Bolivian authorities on Sunday announced “a significant increase in the values of fuels, increasing to 82% in the case of diesel” which caused an indefinite strike in public transport.

The transport union called a strike for an indefinite period, and the opposition called the increase as a “brutal increase” and described it as a “surgery without anesthesia”.

The cost of a liter of gasoline rises from 0.53 to $ 0.91, premium gasoline from 0.68 to $ 1 and Diesel from 0.52 to $ 0.96.

Álvaro García Linera, Bolivia’s vice president and current interim President due to Evo Morales’s trip to Venezuela, said that “his government could not continue to subsidize fuel imports due to smuggling fuel to neighboring countries”.

According to the BBC, “The Bolivian fuel value traded illegally in Peru, Brazil, Chile and Argentina is of 150 million dollars, the vice president called it an ‘open vein of Bolivians to fed foreigners’”.

The government promised an increase in salaries for government employees and said that “The price rise in fuel does not affect the natural gas exported by the country”.