With the arrival of a new shipment of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), the lines at business refilling gas tanks are slowly returning to normal. The blame game, however, has just started. Over the weekend, Industry and Commerce officials blamed the private firm Mundogas for the shortage, saying that it had a serious financial liquidity problem and it was not fulfilling its assigned 40% quota of the national market for LPG. Yesterday Industry and Commerce Minister Luis Manuel Bonetti raised the stakes, saying that Mundogas had not informed his Ministry that a promised gas shipment had not arrived as planned, and that he was contemplating imposing financial sanctions on the firm and lowering its LPG market quota. For its part, Mundogas claims that it has been set up by the government. Its contract with the government calls for payments of the LPG subsidy (the government subsidizes LPG prices on the assumption that it is used mostly for household cooking) within 10 days of presenting a bill, but lately government payments have been averaging 51 days. Mundogas claims that this was done to create liquidity problems for the company so that it would have difficulty fulfilling its quota, and thus justify a cut in the quota. The National Budget Director, Luis Hernández, while admitting that the government had gotten "somewhat behind" in payments recently, said that it was less than Mondogas claims and that his office is speeding up payments to avoid future problems.
