Chavez warns he could nationalize food companies

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned on Monday he could nationalize large food distributors caught hoarding amid widespread shortages of groceries, saying he was hoping for an "excuse" to take them over.

Despite unprecedented oil income, the OPEC nation has struggled for months to keep food on supermarket shelves, a problem businesses blame on government price controls.

Authorities attribute the shortages to hoarding by unscrupulous capitalists.

"I hope they give me the excuse I need to intervene and expropriate the big chains ... of food production and distribution," Chavez said during a televised speech.

"We are going to keep an eye on the big ones, that's where the most ferocious capitalism is."

Chavez's warning came just weeks after Venezuela's largest food distributor, Alimentos Polar, accused the government of seizing 500 metric tons of food because of charges by officials that the company was preparing to smuggle the goods into Colombia.

Chavez, a self-described socialist, last month launched a campaign to end shortages of basic foods, and authorized the National Guard to seize thousands of metric tons of food suspected of being hoarded or smuggled.

Despite soaring inflation, Venezuela's government has maintained price controls and often forces merchants to sell products at a loss or stop selling them altogether.

The controls leave prices considerably below those of neighboring Colombia, making it profitable to buy goods in Venezuela and resell them across the border at a profit.

Chavez has loosened price controls on some of the goods to try to alleviate the shortages. It has also created a subsidiary of the state oil company PDVSA to import and distribute food.

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth, editing by Chris Wilson)