Thursday May 1, 08:28 PM
Bolivia seizes control of foreign energy, telecoms companies
LA PAZ (AFP) - Bolivia's President Evo Morales Thursday said the government was taking control of the national telephone company and some foreign energy concerns, consolidating a two-year nationalization process.
In an announcement coinciding with the May 1 workers' holiday, Morales said the government was taking control of foreign energy companies Chaco (British Petroleum (LSE: BP.L - news) ), Transredes (Ashmore Energy) and CLHB, controlled by German and Peruvian firms.
"Bolivia wants partners not owners," Morales proclaimed.
The move came on the same day that the socialist president nationalized the national telephone company run by multinational Euro Telecom International (ENTEL).
"Today we are nationalizing ENTEL, and starting today ENTEL returns to the hands of the Bolivian people," Morales told a huge crowd in a May Day speech in La Paz.
The nationalization announcements come two years after another May Day decree by Morales which placed much of his country's energy industry under state control.
Morales warned ENTEL against resistance to this order by "any worker or manager in the enterprise," and threatened to take "absolute control of ENTEL from this very moment.
Landlocked Bolivia, South America's poorest nation with a population of 9.5 million, has Latin America's biggest gas reserves.
The country has been shaken by political crisis in recent months, ahead of a referendum planned for this weekend that would give the eastern lowlands area political autonomy in a direct challenge to Morales.
Santa Cruz, the eastern region controlling the nation's biggest gas reserves, is to vote on Sunday on whether to implement statutes to let it run its own finances and create its own security force.
The leftwing administration of Morales, the country's first-ever indigenous president, Evo Morales, has pledged to ignore the move, which nevertheless looks likely to pass by an overwhelming margin.
An admirer of Cuba's Fidel Castro and ally to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Morales, elected in December 2005, has also pushed a plan to redistribute wealth to the country's poor indigenous people.
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