The Min­istry of Trade has tak­en ac­tion it hopes will pro­tect con­sumers from a planned hike in ce­ment prices by Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL).

The price hike of 15 per­cent by TCL comes mere months af­ter the very Min­istry of Trade sup­port­ed an in­crease of du­ties on Oth­er Hy­draulic Ce­ments of HS 2523.90.00 which all but made Rock Hard Ce­ment un­com­pet­i­tive when com­pared to TCL ce­ment and al­le­ga­tions from Rock Hard that the re­gion was cre­at­ing a mo­nop­oly for TCL and it was sure to lead to price in­creas­es for con­sumers.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try it has not­ed the an­nounce­ment made by the lo­cal ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­er of an im­pend­ing in­crease in the price of ce­ment by 15% with ef­fect from 20th De­cem­ber 2021 and the gov­ern­ment has tak­en two de­ci­sions to en­sure the af­ford­abil­i­ty of ce­ment in the lo­cal mar­ket.

The first is the Cab­i­net has agreed to a Re­vi­sion of the Quo­ta and Im­port Li­cens­ing Regime for Ce­ment (Build­ing Ce­ment-Grey and Oth­er Hy­draulic Ce­ments) for 2022. Specif­i­cal­ly, the max­i­mum Quo­ta ceil­ing for Ce­ment al­lowed for im­por­ta­tion will be set at 150,000 tonnes (an in­crease from 75,000 tonnes in 2021 with each ex­ist­ing reg­is­tered im­porter re­ceiv­ing a 50% in­crease in their quo­ta al­lo­ca­tion) in 2022.

Sec­ond­ly, at a Spe­cial Meet­ing of the Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (COT­ED) of CARI­COM held on De­cem­ber 10, 2021 and at the re­quest of Trinidad and To­ba­go, COT­ED agreed to a sus­pen­sion of the CET and the in­crease of the rate of du­ty to 20% on Oth­er hy­draulic ce­ments of HS 2523.90.00 for the one (1) year pe­ri­od, Jan­u­ary 1 to De­cem­ber 31, 2022. The Min­istry said it will be re­called that COT­ED had pre­vi­ous­ly ap­proved a sus­pen­sion of the CET and the in­crease of the rate of du­ty to 50% on Oth­er hy­draulic ce­ments of HS 2523.90.00 for the one (1) year pe­ri­od, Jan­u­ary 1 to De­cem­ber 31, 2021. There­fore, for the pe­ri­od 01 Jan­u­ary 2022 to De­cem­ber 31, 2022 the rate of du­ty on Oth­er hy­draulic ce­ments will now be 20% from the pre­vi­ous 50%.

The Min­istry of Trade said these pub­lic pol­i­cy ad­just­ments will al­low for ad­di­tion­al vol­umes of ex­tra-re­gion­al ce­ment to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go at a low­er rate of du­ty so as to en­sure that ce­ment re­mains com­pet­i­tive­ly priced.

“These mea­sures will al­so en­sure the con­tin­ued vi­a­bil­i­ty of the lo­cal ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try (which is a net for­eign ex­change earn­er and cur­rent­ly pro­vides em­ploy­ment to over 315 per­sons di­rect­ly and en­gages ap­prox­i­mate­ly 450 small con­trac­tors for ser­vices).The Gov­ern­ment is of the firm view that the avail­abil­i­ty of af­ford­able ce­ment forms a crit­i­cal link­age be­tween the man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­struc­tion sec­tors and there­fore is vi­tal for the coun­try’s sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment as well as the wel­fare of con­sumers.” The Min­istry of Trade in­sist­ed.

The Min­istry said gov­ern­ment was made aware of a po­ten­tial price in­crease of ce­ment in No­vem­ber 2021. At that time, the MTI in­di­cat­ed its con­cern to the TCL Group and ex­pressed the view that any price in­crease was un­ac­cept­able giv­en that 90% of the in­puts in­to the man­u­fac­ture of ce­ment is lo­cal.

The MTI said it shall con­tin­ue to ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor mar­ket con­di­tions in the do­mes­tic mar­ket and make fur­ther ad­just­ments as re­quired to en­sure af­ford­able ce­ment for con­sumers.