President Hugo Chávez has raised milk prices in Venezuela by 37 per cent in a bid to ease widespread shortages, while threatening to expropriate the property of companies failing to respect new officially controlled prices.

“If there’s a producer that refuses to sell milk to the government and sells it instead at a higher price to a private company, we will expropriate their farm,” said Mr Chávez on his Sunday television programme, Aló Presidente, as he inaugurated a state milk processing plant.