JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

12,222 new cars bought in nine months

by

20140102

Many mo­torists con­sid­er the jour­ney to work in grid­lock traf­fic a night­mare.With the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er, Ruben Cato, es­ti­mat­ing in 2010 there were about 600,000 ve­hi­cles on the na­tion's roads, the ques­tion of­ten asked is: how many more can the road net­work take?Ac­cord­ing to da­ta ob­tained from the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) for the first three quar­ters in 2013, the num­ber of new cars pur­chased was 12,222. Com­pared to a sim­i­lar pe­ri­od for 2012, 10,877 new cars were pur­chased. In oth­er words, there has been a 12.37 per cent in­crease in new cars pur­chased for 2013 com­pared to 2012. (See ta­ble and graph)

A clos­er look at the da­ta in­di­cates a sharp in­crease in the pur­chase of new cars dur­ing Oc­to­ber 2012: 1,471, com­pared to four months lat­er–Feb­ru­ary 2013–when mo­torists bought 1,069 cars. The slump in the pur­chase of new cars rep­re­sents a 27.33 per cent drop.Cato re­port­ed in 2012, the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty reg­is­tered 27,488 ve­hi­cles in to­tal. Look­ing at a six-year trend, from Jan­u­ary 2007 to 2013, he said, in to­tal, 230,000 ve­hi­cles were reg­is­tered at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice.With the av­er­age mo­torist spend­ing four hours dai­ly in traf­fic. What is the ef­fect of that on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty?Vin­cent Cabr­era, pres­i­dent-gen­er­al of the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers' Union, said traf­fic would thick­en if the vol­ume of cars on the na­tion's roads is in­creased. Cabr­era said not many peo­ple would opt to leave their cars home and use pub­lic trans­porta­tion."Do you see what hap­pens in some of these places to get trans­port every morn­ing? It's a 'rush and grab' to make sure you get trans­port, so when you reach to work in that state of mind, ob­vi­ous­ly, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is go­ing to be af­fect­ed."

Mean­while, econ­o­mist Mary King said an in­crease in vol­ume of cars on the roads may mean "peo­ple are a lit­tle more con­fi­dent that next year is go­ing to be good."Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz said the in­creased vol­ume of cars pur­chased means the pub­lic's taste pat­terns are steer­ing more to­ward own­ing a ve­hi­cle rather than us­ing pub­lic trans­port. He said there is need to pro­vide a more ef­fi­cient trans­porta­tion sys­tem."We do have a tran­sit meet­ing sched­uled to­mor­row (Jan­u­ary 3) where we'll get some ex­perts to sit down and go through the is­sues in T&T. These are both lo­cal and for­eign ex­perts who have dab­bled with T&T be­fore to come up with a com­pre­hen­sive tran­sit plan.Cadiz said new things are com­ing for 2014 in the trans­porta­tion sec­tor."We are go­ing to be see­ing the new Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty com­ing in­to parts of the old li­cens­ing regime by Sep­tem­ber 2014. It's go­ing to be a lot eas­i­er, for in­stance, to li­cense a ve­hi­cle. It will change some­what, the way we train our ju­ve­nile dri­vers and how to ob­tain a dri­ver's li­cense."Cadiz said the more time a mo­torist spends in traf­fic, the less pro­duc­tive they are at work."Ob­vi­ous­ly, we have to do some­thing about it. One of the so­lu­tions is, in ad­di­tion to bet­ter road net­work, will be the use of pub­lic trans­port."

Cen­tral Bank da­ta

MONTH 2012 2013

JAN 1,290 1,340

FEB 994 1,069

MAR 1,068 1,388

APR 1,109 1,412

MAY 1,279 1,398

JUNE 1,355 1,337

JU­LY 1,361 1,479

AUG 1,233 1,404

SEPT 1188 1,395

OCT 1,471 *****

NOV 1,181 *****

DEC 1,325 *****


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored