Yvonne Webb

Sat­nar­ine Bachew, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL), has in­formed Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod that the in­sol­vent ce­ment pro­duc­er has a sol­id cor­po­rate plan to raise its per­for­mance lev­el. Com­ing out of a heavy loss sit­u­a­tion, McLeod met with the TCL man­age­ment team last Thurs­day at his Port-of-Spain of­fice to get an in­sight on the im­pli­ca­tions of the 2011 group fi­nan­cials.

For the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2011, the TCL Group's con­sol­i­dat­ed au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment re­port­ed a loss of $375 mil­lion, fol­low­ing a loss of more than $80 mil­lion in 2010. Added to this, TCL work­ers, mem­bers of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) have been en­gaged in in­dus­tri­al ac­tion for the past 55 days.

Bachew said the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment of TCL was able to bring him up to speed with the re­sults, ex­plain what ac­count­ed for it and dis­cussed the way for­ward in terms of their mar­ket­ing plans for the Group. He at­trib­uted some of the Group's prob­lems to a de­cline in the economies in the re­gion. He said the is­lands such as St Kitts, St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia, were not grow­ing and the ce­ment pro­duc­er, as a re­sult, was now tar­get­ing more lu­cra­tive mar­kets.

"We are tar­get­ing mar­kets that are show­ing growth, Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, Suri­name, Mar­tinique, Guade­loupe and Haiti," Bachew said. On the lo­cal front, Bachew was very op­ti­mistic about ce­ment sales pick­ing up steam, since its de­cline three years ago.

He said while TCL has been ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the de­cline in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, he is op­ti­mistic the com­pa­ny will see an im­prove­ment, be­cause of a num­ber of pro­grammes out­lined by the Gov­ern­ment. He re­ferred to plans out­lined for the con­struc­tion of hos­pi­tals, schools, po­lice sta­tions, the Point Fortin High­way and the re­cent­ly launched road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme.

"Those pro­grammes, (road con­struc­tion), which will in­volve a lot of ce­ment-based con­struc­tion for drains, pave­ments, over head bridges, fly­overs, which is ce­ment and con­crete base and that ob­vi­ous­ly will ini­ti­ate some growth in the con­struc­tion sec­tor."

TCL's 2011 au­dit al­so re­vealed that the com­pa­ny's cur­rent li­a­bil­i­ties ex­ceed­ed cur­rent as­sets by $1.58 bil­lion at the end of 2011, main­ly due to the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of most bor­row­ings to cur­rent li­a­bil­i­ties. TCL al­so con­clud­ed that the com­bi­na­tion of its 2011 loss­es, its neg­a­tive net worth of $1.58 bil­lion and the fact that "all loan agree­ments were in le­gal de­fault" rep­re­sent­ed a "ma­te­r­i­al un­cer­tain­ty that may im­pact the abil­i­ty of the Group to con­tin­ue as a grow­ing con­cern."

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Mc Leod al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue his ef­forts to re­solve the dis­pute that has led to the cur­rent in­dus­tri­al ac­tion be­tween the com­pa­ny and work­ers. A re­lease from the Min­istry of Labour said: "Min­is­ter McLeod, in his con­tin­ued ef­forts to­wards re­solv­ing the dis­pute that has led to cur­rent in­dus­tri­al ac­tion be­tween the em­ploy­er and the OW­TU, in­vit­ed TCL to re­view its po­si­tion and in­form him of this re­vi­sion in due course.

McLeod has, in the past, en­cour­aged par­ties to re-eval­u­ate their re­spec­tive po­si­tions and has again, opt­ed to em­ploy such mech­a­nism in this in­stance so as to es­tab­lish joint con­cil­ia­to­ry talks be­tween the par­ties. "The em­ploy­er has re­it­er­at­ed its as­sur­ance to Min­is­ter McLeod, that there is suf­fi­cient ce­ment avail­able to pre­vent any ma­jor dis­rup­tion with­in the con­struc­tion sec­tor."