An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has ad­vised its mem­bers that there will be no change to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s (NGC) de­ci­sion to in­crease nat­ur­al gas prices for Light In­dus­tri­al Con­sumers (LIC) for the 2026 pe­ri­od.

Ear­li­er this week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that NGC had of­fi­cial­ly in­formed lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers who use nat­ur­al gas that the price of the com­mod­i­ty will be in­creased by be­tween 60 and 70 per cent by the end of Jan­u­ary.

In an up­date cir­cu­lat­ed to mem­bers yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the TTMA out­lined the out­come of a meet­ing held with NGC on Thurs­day, at which the as­so­ci­a­tion raised con­cerns about the im­pact of the pro­posed ad­just­ment on the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

The TTMA warned that high­er gas prices could erode com­pet­i­tive­ness among man­u­fac­tur­ers that re­ly on nat­ur­al gas as a key in­put, while al­so af­fect­ing small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es sup­plied by those man­u­fac­tur­ers.

The as­so­ci­a­tion point­ed to the risk of a cas­cad­ing in­fla­tion­ary ef­fect, with po­ten­tial con­se­quences in­clud­ing re­duced pro­duc­tion lev­els, con­strained ex­ports and a de­cline in for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

The as­so­ci­a­tion urged NGC to re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion or in­tro­duce the pol­i­cy shift in a more grad­ual and man­age­able man­ner for LIC users.

NGC, in re­sponse, main­tained that the pro­posed in­crease aligns with the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy ob­jec­tive of en­sur­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty and vi­a­bil­i­ty of State en­ter­pris­es.

The TTMA was ad­vised that NGC has been sell­ing gas be­low cost to cus­tomers and that the pro­posed LIC price re­mains com­pet­i­tive and sub­sidised when bench­marked against in­ter­na­tion­al nat­ur­al gas prices.

NGC al­so in­di­cat­ed that the pro­posed rate of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$5.30 per unit re­mains favourable rel­a­tive to prices paid by oth­er nat­ur­al gas users in T&T, in­clud­ing lo­cal in­dus­tri­al and en­er­gy sec­tor con­sumers, who face sub­stan­tial­ly high­er rates.

The com­pa­ny fur­ther in­di­cat­ed that the pro­posed price re­flects cur­rent up­stream ac­qui­si­tion costs and strong de­mand for nat­ur­al gas.

Mem­bers were in­formed that NGC will pro­ceed with the pro­pos­al as pre­sent­ed for 2026, of­fer­ing two op­tions to LIC users.

Com­pa­nies may ac­cept the price for a min­i­mum one-year pe­ri­od, with the ex­pec­ta­tion that in­ter­nal ad­just­ments may be re­quired to main­tain vi­a­bil­i­ty, or com­mit to a three-year arrange­ment at the cur­rent rate, which NGC will ho­n­our re­gard­less of changes in lo­cal or glob­al mar­ket con­di­tions.

The TTMA not­ed that, fol­low­ing the one-year pe­ri­od and sub­ject to de­vel­op­ments in what it de­scribed as a volatile glob­al en­vi­ron­ment, there may be scope to re­vis­it pric­ing terms for 2027.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, TTMA pres­i­dent Dale Par­son con­firmed that the up­date was cir­cu­lat­ed to mem­bers yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.