Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Pres­i­dent of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Robindranath Narayns­ingh, yes­ter­day said the coun­try's 170 gas sta­tions were on the verge of col­lapse due to poor prof­itabil­i­ty mar­gins from the sale of fu­el.

Say­ing the gas sta­tions ser­vice more than half the pop­u­la­tion on a dai­ly ba­sis, Narayns­ingh ad­mit­ted their in­dus­try had been plunged in­to a cri­sis. He could not say what per­cent­age of the gas sta­tions were like­ly to close their doors but said a dark cloud was hang­ing over their heads and "an im­pend­ing doom was sure­ly com­ing if this sit­u­a­tion per­sists."

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress to a small group of deal­ers at a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing at Kam-po Restau­rant, Ch­agua­nas, Narayns­ingh plead­ed with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Nicole Olivierre to meet with them be­fore the sit­u­a­tion wors­ened and jobs were lost.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so threat­ened to seek ju­di­cial re­view against Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al to award re­tail mar­ket­ing li­cences in the landown­er's name rather than the op­er­a­tor.

"Our Gov­ern­ment came in and promised a ris­ing tide of pros­per­i­ty. We have in­stead been plunged in­to a cri­sis that is now be­gin­ning to af­fect all present here to­day. Our in­dus­try is on the brink of de­struc­tion. We are not the on­ly ones who are feel­ing the pinch of a re­duced prof­it mar­gin, many of us are near in­sol­ven­cy," Narayns­ingh said.

He said busi­ness­es were be­ing lost while gas sta­tion deal­ers were be­ing shat­tered which showed that their fu­ture and liveli­hoods were in deep trou­ble.

"To­day, I say to you the chal­lenges we face are re­al. They are se­ri­ous and there are many. We deal with a lot of mon­ey but our mar­gins are very small," he added.

The meet­ing was called at a time when coun­tries across the globe are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dy­nam­ic changes in the pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try which were now al­so af­fect­ing the re­tail sec­tor in T&T. The re­tail sec­tor com­pris­es re­tail­ers, dis­trib­u­tors, deal­ers, fran­chisees and op­er­a­tors.

Of the 170 deal­ers, Narayns­ingh said 40 sta­tions op­er­ate con­ve­nient stores which help sup­ple­ment their in­comes and help ab­sorb the loss­es in­curred at the pumps.

There are five sta­tions in To­ba­go and col­lec­tive­ly they em­ploy ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 work­ers na­tion­wide. The deal­ers buy fu­el dai­ly from Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um and Unipet who are whole­salers.

In the last two years, Narayns­ingh said over 20 gas sta­tions deal­ers had sur­ren­dered their keys to NP be­cause they were op­er­at­ing at a loss.

Since No­vem­ber 2005, Narayns­ingh said the price of liq­uid pe­tro­le­um (fu­el) had not in­creased for deal­ers while the cost of liv­ing soared across the board.

"We are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a prof­itabil­i­ty de­cline with two re­cent in­creas­es in the price of su­per gaso­line and diesel, to­tal­ly­ing 30 per cent. Our gross prof­it on su­per has gone from 6.7 per cent to 5.6 per cent, while diesel from 8.7 per cent to 7.3 per cent."

For every litre of fu­el sold, Narayns­ingh said deal­ers make 17 cents on su­per, 17 cents on pre­mi­um and 12 cents on diesel.

"Every time the price of fu­el goes up that mar­gin re­mains the same. What hap­pens is that our gross prof­it keeps go­ing down. We need to have that mar­gin in­creased from 17 cents to 25 cents for us to make a prof­it.

"For every $1 that is spent at the pump, two cents go to the deal­er. The rest goes to the Gov­ern­ment and NP. We are in a fixed price busi­ness. If we don't get an in­crease we are look­ing at a col­lapse of this in­dus­try," Narayns­ingh warned.

With lit­tle prof­it mar­gins, Narayns­ingh said deal­ers have to pay staff, tax­es, elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter rates, tele­phone, se­cu­ri­ty and main­tain their busi­ness­es. He said what was crip­pling many busi­ness­es was the 2016 im­po­si­tion of a 200 per cent Green Levy and Busi­ness Levy Tax.

"Many of us now have our backs against a wall," he said

Narayns­ingh said deal­ers should have been con­sid­ered by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter for a re­duc­tion in both tax­es.

Blanked by min­is­ter

An­oth­er is­sue Narayns­ingh raised was the 2010 sus­pend­ed is­suance of re­tail mar­ket­ing li­cences by the Min­istry of En­er­gy, as it re­views the terms and con­di­tions of these li­cences.

He said: "At present, the min­istry has pro­posed to put the li­cence on the landown­er's name in­stead of the op­er­a­tor whom they are bound to by law. Our many ef­forts to en­gage the min­istry on this mat­ter has not been fruit­ful in the past six months.

"Op­er­a­tors must ap­pre­ci­ate that the re­tail li­cence be­ing held in a name oth­er than the op­er­a­tor re­moves their se­cu­ri­ty of tenure and en­ti­tle­ment to the re­tail mar­gin. This is com­plete­ly against the Pe­tro­le­um Act."

He said let­ters sent to Olivierre about that is­sue were not ac­knowl­edged.

Sec­re­tary and trea­sur­er of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Fabia Saleema Sat­tar, said Olivierre was in­vit­ed to de­liv­er the fea­ture ad­dress at yes­ter­day's meet­ing but failed to show. That was not the first time, Sat­tar said, the as­so­ci­a­tion had in­vit­ed Olivierre, hop­ing to ad­dress their con­cerns and come to an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion.

"When one con­sid­ers where this in­dus­try was one year ago, I don't think we would have en­vi­sioned this po­si­tion to­day," she added.

She ex­plained that what they were fac­ing was not the busi­ness of NP or Unipet.

"It is the busi­ness of the min­istry and the Gov­ern­ment. It is very clear that the min­istry is not con­cerned with what our con­cerns are and maybe we would have to take it a lit­tle bit fur­ther. In the big­ger scheme of things we are not con­sult­ed in changes that di­rect­ly im­pact our in­dus­try," she said.

Olivierre did not re­spond to a text mes­sage sent to cell­phone while a call went unan­swered.