Venezuela’s centrally planned economy may have run out of the essentials like toilet paper, milk and sugar, but a shortage of AK-103 rifles is not something they need worry about now that the government’s new rifle and ammunition factory has come online.

The factory, long overdue to have begun production, is a collaboration between the Venezuelan government and Russia’s Izhmash. Izhmash has supplied the tooling and will be paid royalties for each rifle manufactured.

The factory is expected to produce 25,000 rifles per year. This works out to be 80 – 90 completed rifles per day. This is on top of the 100,000 AK-103 and AK-104 the country purchased in 2005. The factory will also produce 70 million rounds of ammunition per year, or about 200,000 rounds per day.

Given that they only have 113,000 active duty personnel in the military and 60,000 police officers, I can only conclude that they plan on exporting both rifles and ammunition.

Hat Tip: IndoDefensa