VENEZUELA has taken decisive action against corporate hoarders, with military and civilian officials taking over supermarkets to ensure distribution of essential goods today.

The government temporarily took over the Dia a Dia supermarket chain as part of a crackdown on the private businesses it blames for worsening shortages and long queues that have been likened to the artificial crisis preceding Chile’s 1973 fascist coup.

President Nicolas Maduro says that right-wing owners are purposely making shopping a nightmare by hoarding goods and reducing the number of checkouts open so as to force shoppers to queue for long periods.

He has promised to jail any business owner found to be fomenting economic chaos.

Two executives of Venezuela’s largest chain of chemist shops, Farmatodo, were detained over the weekend as part of an investigation by price-control authorities.

Parliament Speaker Diosdado Cabello said on Monday night that officials had arrested Dia a Dia’s owner and taken over its 35 stores “for the protection of Venezuelans.”

By the next morning, armed soldiers were overseeing queues for bags of sugar at a Dia a Dia shop near the presidential palace.

Many Venezuelans agree with Mr Maduro’s viewpoint over the role of the private sector.

Even Dia a Dia branch manager Carlos Barrios said that it was possible that his bosses were hoarding. He’d seen the photos that government workers had posted outside his store of pallets of sugar, corn flour and toilet paper apparently sitting at the chain’s central warehouse.