Within a three-day period, some 170 tonnes of food and toiletries will be sent to Venezuela by plane, while 600 tonnes will be sent via sea next week.
This was revealed yesterday by the Venezuelan Vice Minister of Domestic Trade, Colonel Renier Urbáez.
Speaking to the media in the South Terminal at Piarco International Airport after two Venezuelan military cargo planes arrived to start loading the items for transportation to the Latin American country, Urbáez said it was hoped they’d get the items to the public fairly quickly.
According to Urbáez, the food will be sent firstly to the Sucre State, which has a population of just over 700,000 people.
Yesterday, 12 tonnes of rice were sent on a first trip, which left just after midday, along with 33 tonnes of chicken, which consists of 16,000 heads of chicken.
Asked if manufacturers were paid for the goods, which as one of the major concerns raised by the businesses, chief executive officer of the T&T Manufacturer's Association, Dr Ramesh Ramdeen, said they received the payment from Venezuela via their respective bank accounts.
Robin Phillips, Marketing Director at Arawak, said the first flight took 3,000 heads of chicken, while the second left with 7,000 and the third, 3,000. The value of chicken exports totalled approximately US$100,000. The total cost of the items to be shipped in this first phase was said to be US$27 million.
Ramdeen disclosed that the other items to be sent within the three-day period included pasta, powder milk and ketchup.
“From Tuesday toilet paper and other bulky goods will be going to Venezuela by boat," Ramdeen said.
Asked if citizens should be worried about shortage of goods here in T&T, now that manufacturers were supplying Venezuela, Ramdeen said, “No There will be no shortage as the capacity is mostly in stocks, stockpiling inventories. But what this new agreement should do is ramp up capacity by the manufacturers.
“This generating of foreign exchange would help manufacturers to source their raw materials for production.”
About eight local manufacturers have committed to delivering the required goods for use by the Venezuelan market, which is larger than all of Caricom combined.