Wall Street Journal | February 2, 2011 | Taos Turner
BUENOS AIRES (Dow Jones)–Argentina’s government plans to force multimedia company Grupo Clarin SA (GCLA.BA) to roll back a recent price hike on more than 3 million of its cable television customers.
The move comes just hours after the government ordered steel makers and oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA, RDSA.LN) to backpedal on recent price increases in a bid to subdue inflation ahead of a presidential election in October.
“They’re moving ahead with price hikes that we’re not going to permit,” Economy Minister Amado Boudou said Wednesday in an interview with Radio Continental. “We’re going to make sure this doesn’t happen. We don’t see any reason for it.”
The move against Grupo Clarin, which provides cable TV and Internet access through its Cablevision unit, is the latest in an ongoing battle between the media company and the government.
The two sides have been engaged in an intense battle over the future of Argentina’s media industry.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has long bashed the media, accusing it of bias and abuse of power. To curb the influence of traditional media companies, in 2009 she signed a law, upheld in court, reorganizing the media industry in general and forcing Clarin to sell key assets.
Last year, Planning Minister Julio De Vido said he would force Grupo Clarin to shut down its Internet service unit within 90 days. He accused the company of operating an Internet company without a proper broadband license and told its customers they would have to find a new Internet service within that period.
Grupo Clarin called the government’s plan to shut it down “illegal, arbitrary and unprecedented.”
But the 90-day deadline has passed and the government has been largely silent about the subject since then.
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