Many restau­rants are yet to de­cide whether they will re­duce the prices of their meals. Sev­er­al restau­rants through­out Port-of-Spain said they had not held com­pre­hen­sive dis­cus­sions with staff since Gov­ern­ment's mea­sure to re­move the 15 per cent Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) on close to 4,000 items took ef­fect two days ago.

One man­ag­er at Jaf­fa's at the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain said it was very doubt­ful that the es­tab­lish­ment would low­er its prices as there were "ad­di­tion­al costs" such as the elec­tric­i­ty and cook­ing gas used to pre­pare the food. "We have not changed any of our prices and at present there is no in­ten­tion to do so be­cause there are costs that go with the meal and we must take that in­to con­sid­er­a­tion," he said.

A chef at Trot­ters on Mar­aval Road said it was still too ear­ly to de­ter­mine whether prices would be re­duced be­cause some the food items were now VAT-free. "We have not bought any new stock since the ini­tia­tive was im­ple­ment­ed. We are still us­ing the goods we have so it is on­ly when we buy new stock then we could make a clear de­ter­mi­na­tion."

At the Val­park Chi­nese Restau­rant, Val­sayn, the in­ten­tion was the same. "We are still us­ing the goods we have be­fore VAT was tak­en off. It is on­ly when we do our re­pur­chas­es we will have an idea of the new prices we are work­ing with. "But at the same time, there are many fac­tors which go in­to prepar­ing a meal in­clud­ing the ba­sic ser­vices like elec­tric­i­ty," a man­ag­er said.

But Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said on Thurs­day it was not ac­cu­rate for restau­rants to say they would not drop the prices of their meals be­cause there were ad­di­tion­al costs in prepar­ing the food. Bharath was re­spond­ing to state­ments by the Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Has­sel Thom said on Wednes­day, while VAT had been re­moved from non-lux­u­ry food items, that would not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­duce the cost of a meal in a restau­rant or oth­er food and bev­er­age op­er­a­tions that were VAT-reg­is­tered.

Bharath said be­cause of open com­pe­ti­tion the Gov­ern­ment could not dic­tate to restau­rants what price to sell their meals, but the choice of where to dine was left to the con­sumer.