Fanfare too much for Bolivia's "renationalisation"?

Hi, I don's want to wax lyrical about what is no doubt a momentous event however over/underexxagerated the details. Just wanted to let people see this more detailed post from Graciela of The Democratic Center's email list which encourages more research before reacting solely on an emotional level:



I've seen in several places the same misinformation that private companies will be forced to hand over or sell 51% of their shares. To my understanding, that is nowhere in the Decree. The government is only talking about recovering majority control in 5 companies. Three are the capitalized- chaco (exploration/production), andina (exploration/production), and transredes (transportation) which were carved out of YPFB. These were the government's property to begin with before they were handed over to foreign corporations. now the government maintains minority control (around 48%) in these consortiums, and what they're talking about is turning that into majority control. The other company is the petrobras refineries which were YPFB refineries handed over to a consortium of PB and an argentine company by Pres Banzer in 99. The last company is Compania Logistica de Hidrocarburos de Bolivia is a german/peruvian/bolivian consortium that was given over all the pipelines in bolivia in 2000. (it's unclear to me whether the government maintained shares in the refineries and pipelines). THese are the only 5 companies in which the gov't is talking about regaining majority shares, and they all are examples of state giveaways, eg the private investors didn''t invest, they got handed over state assets. And now the gov;t is taking a fraction of that back. The private exploration and production companies will not be affected. So, point is, they're not talking about taking over or seiving assets, or focing sales of shares from private companies.
g