Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) has re­port­ed a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in its fi­nan­cial per­for­mance with earn­ings be­fore tax­a­tion of $114.2 mil­lion for the first quar­ter of 2013.The ce­ment com­pa­ny's con­sol­i­dat­ed in­ter­im fi­nan­cial re­port for the quar­ter end­ed March 31 shows that the earn­ings were 74 per cent of the sum record­ed for the en­tire pri­or year.

"Rev­enue for the quar­ter in­creased by $117 mil­lion com­pared with the pri­or year as a re­sult of high­er ce­ment sales vol­umes . . . and high­er sell­ing prices in most mar­kets," the re­port stat­ed.Those in­creas­es were by 52 per­cent for T&T, sev­en per cent in Ja­maica and 29 per cent in ex­port mar­kets.TCL al­so said con­crete vol­umes ex­ceed­ed the pri­or year pe­ri­od by ten per cent.

"As a re­sult of the sig­nif­i­cant ex­pen­di­ture made in the lat­ter of last year, plant per­for­mance has been more re­li­able and ef­fi­cient with clink­er pro­duc­tion ex­ceed­ing pri­or year by 32 per cent–par­tial­ly due to the TCL strike in 2012–and ce­ment pro­duc­tion by 21 per cent."