Rock Hard Ce­ment is af­firm­ing its com­mit­ment to hold­ing its prices steady, even as T&T’s con­struc­tion sec­tor braces for what can be a sig­nif­i­cant cost shock, fol­low­ing lo­cal ce­ment pro­duc­er, TCL’s sig­nal that it in­tends to in­crease its prices.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Rock Hard Trinidad, Ryan Ramhit, told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian no price in­crease is on the hori­zon un­less its own op­er­at­ing costs change dras­ti­cal­ly.

“There’s no in­crease in price in the fore­see­able fu­ture. Of course, if some­thing dras­tic hap­pens to af­fect my end price, my end cost...Rock Hard is here to sup­port Trinidad and To­ba­go. So, I will al­ways do my best to en­sure that my prices are low so I can bring af­ford­able ce­ment in­to the en­tire coun­try,” he said.

This stance stands in sharp con­trast to Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL), which is ex­pect­ed to raise prices by mid Feb­ru­ary.

TCL’s pend­ing price move­ment is di­rect­ly tied to on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), which has pro­posed a 77 per cent in­crease in nat­ur­al gas prices, ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 1, 2026.

Con­trac­tors told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that “un­of­fi­cial­ly,” the an­tic­i­pat­ed in­crease in TCL’s ce­ment prices could be be­tween 15 and 20 per cent, though the fi­nal ad­just­ment has not been an­nounced.

When con­tact­ed on Fri­day, Bhag­wans­ingh’s Hard­ware, one of T&T’s largest chains, said a bag of TCL ce­ment re­tails for $68 VAT in­clu­sive while a bag of Rock Hard ce­ment sells for $62 VAT in­clu­sive.

Nat­ur­al gas is a key in­put in ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing, and the pro­posed price hike has trig­gered in­dus­try wide con­cern, with rip­ple ef­fects al­ready be­ing felt across pro­duc­tion sched­ules, sup­ply chains, and project cost­ing.

The pres­sure is not lim­it­ed to ce­ment pro­duc­ers.

In a let­ter dat­ed Jan­u­ary 28, 2026, ABEL Build­ing So­lu­tions (ABS)—one of the na­tion’s largest clay and con­crete block man­u­fac­tur­ers—al­so warned cus­tomers that ris­ing prices of nat­ur­al gas, pack­ag­ing, and trans­porta­tion had strained op­er­a­tions through­out 2025.

ABS con­firmed it in­creased prices last year and sig­nalled that fur­ther ad­just­ments may be­come un­avoid­able if NGC’s pro­pos­al is im­ple­ment­ed.

The com­pa­ny made clear that it does not sup­port the pro­posed gas hike and is ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing NGC and in­dus­try stake­hold­ers to high­light its sweep­ing im­pli­ca­tions.

It al­so un­der­scored that en­er­gy-de­pen­dent man­u­fac­tur­ers op­er­ate with thin mar­gins and sud­den in­put spikes could desta­bilise both pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty and con­sumer af­ford­abil­i­ty.

Amid this un­cer­tain­ty, Rock Hard has re­port­ed strong mar­ket per­for­mance since re-en­ter­ing the T&T mar­ket last year.

“It has been good—very good,” Ramhit said, not­ing full cus­tomer sup­port up­on the brand’s re­turn. Even in the post-elec­tion pe­ri­od marked by cau­tion, he main­tained sales have re­mained steady.

Ce­ment price rise ex­pect­ed to fu­el in­dus­try-wide in­creas­es

Even with­out fi­nal con­fir­ma­tion from TCL, in­dus­try sen­ti­ment is uni­fied: an in­crease in the price of ce­ment would mean high­er costs across the board.

“Once ce­ment goes up, every­thing goes up,” said for­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) Mikey Joseph ex­plained, adding,“Ready mix, pre­mix, con­crete blocks, foun­da­tion blocks—every sin­gle com­po­nent that re­lies on ce­ment will be af­fect­ed.”

The im­pact would stretch be­yond build­ing ma­te­ri­als. Com­pa­nies that pro­duce blend­ed con­struc­tion chem­i­cals, ad­he­sives, and spe­cial­ty prod­ucts us­ing TCL ce­ment may al­so need to ad­just pric­ing.

These sec­ondary ef­fects mean that the in­crease would be felt in res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion, com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment and large-scale in­fra­struc­tur­al projects.

As the Gov­ern­ment ac­cel­er­ates its pledge to de­liv­er af­ford­able hous­ing for or­di­nary cit­i­zens, Joseph al­so ex­pressed con­cern over the dura­bil­i­ty and over­all qual­i­ty of new­ly con­struct­ed units, not­ing that while thou­sands of homes have been com­plet­ed un­der the na­tion­al hous­ing pro­gramme, re­ports from sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in­di­cate that many struc­tures are not hold­ing up as ex­pect­ed.

The Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC), the um­brel­la body rep­re­sent­ing plan­ners, con­trac­tors, en­gi­neers, and the T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA), warned that the price ad­just­ments would af­fect both gov­ern­ment and pri­vate projects, ul­ti­mate­ly fil­ter­ing down to con­sumers.

Not­ing that TCL re­mains the dom­i­nant—or in prac­ti­cal terms, sole—sup­pli­er of lo­cal­ly pro­duced ce­ment, JCC pres­i­dent Fazir Khan said, “Gov­ern­ment should con­tin­ue the pol­i­cy of open com­pe­ti­tion. It is al­ways the best thing for the con­sumer...Once the Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy en­cour­ages com­pe­ti­tion, there is go­ing to be some sort of lev­el­ling of the play­ing field in terms of the cost.”

Be­yond ris­ing ma­te­r­i­al costs, the sec­tor is al­so strug­gling with on­go­ing late gov­ern­ment pay­ments—prob­lems that have his­tor­i­cal­ly oc­curred dur­ing tran­si­tions be­tween ad­min­is­tra­tions.

“Make sure con­trac­tors get their monies on time,” Khan stressed.

Busi­ness­man and con­struc­tion in­dus­try leader Emile Elias agreed the coun­try is en­ter­ing an un­avoid­able pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic ad­just­ment as glob­al con­di­tions shift and long-stand­ing lo­cal chal­lenges emerge more sharply.

“The con­struc­tion in­dus­try just has to face that re­al­i­ty,” he said.

Elias em­pha­sised that “ad­just­ment” is the key word that should guide na­tion­al think­ing in the months ahead as he urged in­dus­tries to fo­cus on ef­fi­cien­cy, in­no­va­tion and smarter op­er­a­tions rather than dwelling on price in­creas­es.

“We just have to ac­cept the in­crease and find ways to work more ef­fi­cient­ly,” he added.

Eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions of ce­ment price hike

The im­pend­ing ce­ment price in­crease by TCL presents a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment ef­forts, par­tic­u­lar­ly as ce­ment re­mains a foun­da­tion­al in­put for in­fra­struc­ture.

This is­sue be­comes even more press­ing in the con­text of the Gov­ern­ment’s on­go­ing re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan, which de­pends heav­i­ly on sta­ble con­struc­tion costs and pre­dictable ma­te­r­i­al flows. For­mer Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan stat­ed an im­pend­ing price hike acts as a di­rect in­fla­tion­ary pres­sure on the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan as it in­creas­es the “cost to build,” which can lead to bud­get over­runs or a re­duc­tion in the scope of es­sen­tial projects.

 “To mit­i­gate this, the Gov­ern­ment must fo­cus on high-ef­fi­cien­cy project man­age­ment to en­sure that in­creased ma­te­r­i­al costs do not de­rail the over­all time­line or fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of the plan,” Sinanan said.

The for­mer min­is­ter added that there must al­so be a clear un­der­stand­ing that the pro­posed ce­ment price in­crease will not on­ly af­fect the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan and its projects but the every-day ac­tiv­i­ties of cit­i­zens seek­ing to build shel­ter and do busi­ness.  

“A way needs to be de­vel­oped to ad­dress the spin-off ef­fects.  Al­so while to­day it may be ce­ment there needs to be an un­der­stand­ing that as we move ahead with any plan there will be a run on re­sources lead­ing to a heat­ing up of a num­ber of sec­tors,” said Sinanan

De­spite these chal­lenges, the for­mer min­is­ter said the broad­er re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan re­mains fea­si­ble — pro­vid­ed two core pil­lars are strength­ened: re­turn on in­vest­ment (ROI) and for­eign ex­change con­vert­ibil­i­ty.

“Projects must gen­er­ate re­turns that sur­pass their fi­nanc­ing costs, en­sur­ing long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty rather than short-term mo­men­tum. Equal­ly im­por­tant is the abil­i­ty of in­vestors to con­vert lo­cal earn­ings in­to for­eign cur­ren­cy.

“In the cur­rent glob­al en­vi­ron­ment, clar­i­ty and pre­dictabil­i­ty around for­eign ex­change ac­cess is es­sen­tial for se­cur­ing ex­ter­nal fi­nanc­ing, fa­cil­i­tat­ing im­ports of ma­te­ri­als and tech­nol­o­gy, and main­tain­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence,” Sinanan fur­ther sug­gest­ed.

He re­ject­ed the idea of paus­ing the na­tion­al plan, ar­gu­ing that eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion would car­ry a greater long-term cost than in­fla­tion-re­lat­ed pres­sures. In­stead, he called for re­cal­i­bra­tion—urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to pri­ori­tise high re­turn on in­vest­ment projects, strength­en fis­cal dis­ci­pline, re­duce bu­reau­crat­ic waste and en­sure a trans­par­ent path­way to for­eign ex­change sta­bil­i­ty.

Plan not af­fect­ed-Min­is­ter

In a very brief re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jear­lean John was con­fi­dent the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan would not be af­fect­ed.

“It doesn’t. It gets bet­ter,” John said, be­fore walk­ing off when asked how the im­pend­ing ce­ment in­crease would af­fect the plan.