(Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan drivers like filling up their gas tanks for 6 cents a gallon. The country’s president says they can’t afford it much longer.

With Venezuelan oil prices down 60 percent since June and the country suffering from shortages of everything from toilet paper to dollars, President Nicolas Maduro said Wednesday that it was time to “open the debate” on raising fuel prices. Though it will hurt their pocketbooks, some Caracas residents said he’s right.

“I spend more to buy a package of bubblegum than I do to fill my car tank,” taxi driver Jose Cordova, 41, said while pumping fuel at a PDV station near Caracas’ financial district. “An increase in the price of gasoline is needed.”

It’s a risky move. From Nigeria to Bolivia, leaders have backed down on plans to raise fuel costs when confronted by public protests. Just a year ago, Maduro faced violent street rallies over his economic policies and the shortage of basic goods which left more than 40 people dead.

Venezuela, home to the world’s largest oil reserves, encountered riots, looting and a military crackdown that eventually helped propel Hugo Chavez to the presidency when then-President Carlos Andres Perez increased gasoline prices in 1989. Fearing a repeat of the so-called Caracazo riots, Chavez never boosted gas prices during the 14 years he served as president. The last price increase was in 1996.

As a result, cheap fuel is an assumed part of life in Venezuela. Caracas residents will sometimes drive a few hundred meters to a coffee shop instead of walking.

Too Late

The price for Venezuela’s Octane 95 gasoline, the most popular fuel, is 0.097 bolivar a liter, or $0.06 a gallon, at the official exchange rate. For the elite who have access to dollars and can change money at the black market rate of 183 per dollar, fuel is essentially free.

Analysts said a fuel price rise is part of package of measures needed to aid the economy but that it might be coming too late. The economy shrank 2.8 percent last year, Maduro said, while the International Monetary Fund forecasts gross domestic product will contract 7 percent in 2015.

“If these measures were introduced a year ago then the market reaction would have been euphoric,” Siobhan Morden, head of Latin America strategy at Jefferies LLC, said in a note to clients Thursday.

Not all drivers trust the government to spend any new revenue wisely.

“What will they do with all that extra income,” asked Ysnaldi Chaguan, a former pharmacist who said he turned to driving taxis after Chavez’s government nationalized his company. “The government continues to say they are investing in social missions but has the quality of life for most Venezuelans improved? The answer is no.”

Adolfo Sandoval, topping up his car in the San Ignacio neighborhood, called cheap prices an “unnecessary gift” from the government.

“The government should give away something else other than gasoline,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pietro D. Pitts in Caracas at ppitts2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andre Soliani at asoliani@bloomberg.net; James Attwood at jattwood3@bloomberg.net Bill Faries, Robert Jameson