Busi­ness clo­sures are mount­ing, and con­cerns are ris­ing that there are grow­ing signs the econ­o­my is trend­ing down­ward.

On Tues­day, Ari­api­ta Av­enue fast food restau­rants Burg­er Joint and Jam­rock Au­then­tic Jerk an­nounced that they would be clos­ing their op­er­a­tions on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 16.

In the past week, the wind up of the News­day was an­nounced, Pro­man an­nounced it melamine plant would be placed on a two-year pause and long-stand­ing Port of Spain Restau­rant and Bar D’Bo­cas al­so con­firmed it had closed.

One lo­cal busi­ness­man told the Busi­ness Guardian that it is clear that the spend­ing pow­er of the pub­lic has large­ly dwin­dled due to a large sec­tion of the pub­lic los­ing their jobs.

“Chief cause is high un­em­ploy­ment. The high un­em­ploy­ment rate, with peo­ple’s salaries not grow­ing. And of course, with the peo­ple’s salaries not grow­ing, in­come in com­pa­nies won’t grow, be­cause if you don’t have $1 to spend by me, in oth­er ar­eas let’s just say, by the bar or any­where else, then we can’t see growth,” said the busi­ness­man, who owns sev­er­al busi­ness­es in the re­tail and en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor.

He said the clo­sures, cou­pled with the rip­ple ef­fects of in­creased tax­es, had made the pub­lic even more se­lec­tive about spend­ing. This, he said, raised ques­tions about the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach, as these wide­spread in­creas­es all but guar­an­teed the av­er­age con­sumer would be af­fect­ed.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, the dis­pos­able in­come is not there any­more, and it has be­come un­af­ford­able be­cause peo­ple’s dis­pos­able in­come is a lot less now,” the busi­ness­man said, “ At the end of the day, we have to find ways to gath­er in­come and in­crease in­come, oth­er than keep on tax­ing the same things over and over, in­ter­nal­ly, in dif­fer­ent ar­eas.”

He con­tin­ued, “Be­cause when you look at it, fines dou­bling, li­cences dou­bling, bar fees dou­bling, as well as cer­tain fees for cus­toms. NIS con­tri­bu­tions go­ing up, elec­tric­i­ty, land­lord tax. Who pays the price? Some com­pa­nies could af­ford to ab­sorb some of it, but most of them can’t. So they have to pass it on to the con­sumer. So the con­sumer pays the price no mat­ter what.”

He ex­plained that he al­so had to sus­pend op­er­a­tions at two of his es­tab­lish­ments as a re­sult of the sit­u­a­tion.

The busi­ness­man said the sit­u­a­tion had sim­i­lar­i­ties to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, ex­cept the virus had been re­placed by “the cost of liv­ing.”

He said, “Peo­ple al­ready were on the bor­der. You know com­pa­nies ab­sorbed the in­crease in fu­el and oth­er in­creas­es that the past gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed, but how much can com­pa­nies re­al­ly ab­sorb?”

News of fete can­cel­la­tions dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son al­so wor­ried him, as he not­ed that tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment of­ten cre­at­ed by these events could have served as a buffer for some of the job loss­es.

The chal­lenges of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic were raised by D’ Bo­cas own­er Laird Agard when asked about the de­ci­sion by the restau­rant and bar to close af­ter 37 years.

“Many busi­ness­es or bars were closed for 18 months be­cause of the pan­dem­ic. Bars were ba­si­cal­ly nowhere. They said they would have tak­en be­tween three to five years, based on your sit­u­a­tion, for a bar to re­cov­er ful­ly from COVID. So many bars are now get­ting over this. And to add (these tax­es) to that, we’re just go­ing back to the draw­ing board,” said Agard, who said the re­cent tax in­creas­es for bars al­so proved piv­otal in his de­ci­sion to close.

“But re­cent­ly, with the new tax­es im­posed by the gov­ern­ment; 100 per cent du­ties on al­co­hol, what has hap­pened is prices have soared, and cus­tomers who would nor­mal­ly come four times a week come once, and ba­si­cal­ly, our sales have de­clined to 50 per cent of what it was, which is un­sus­tain­able based on our rent. We don’t pay $10,000 or $20,000, we pay a sub­stan­tial rent,” said Agard, “So to make it based on what has hap­pened with the econ­o­my and the re­stric­tions posed up­on bars, amuse­ment gam­ing tax and now re­cent­ly, with the year­ly re­new­al go­ing up 100 per cent. It is un­sus­tain­able. The busi­ness mod­el is just un­sus­tain­able.”

Satesh Moonasar, Pres­i­dent of the Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go (BOATT), said small­er bars in par­tic­u­lar were reel­ing.

“The small­er, more rur­al vil­lage bars and stuff are the ones who are feel­ing it the most. Be­cause you re­mem­ber, those are the small­er bars. Their prof­itabil­i­ty will be a lot low­er, the clien­tele will be a lot low­er run­ning so it would af­fect those lo­ca­tions more, where­as the big­ger ones will be af­fect­ed, but that will be some­thing that they could weath­er the storm with, or what­ev­er the case might be. But it’s not a one-size-fits-all. It af­fect­ed the in­dus­try, but it af­fects dif­fer­ent es­tab­lish­ment dif­fer­ent­ly,” said Moonasar.

How­ev­er, both Laird and the busi­ness­man not­ed there were oth­er vari­ables which could im­pact sur­vival, as they said bars pay­ing high rental costs in malls or high-val­ue re­al es­tate ar­eas were al­so strug­gling to cov­er the costs while bars that own their prop­er­ty may ab­sorb the shock. The busi­ness­man ex­plained that the av­er­age bar would make $2 on every beer sold, while Laird not­ed it would take the sale of 34 cas­es of beer for him to make $5,000.

“And $5,000 can’t even pay one work­er, and I have 14, “ said Agard, “It’s not as easy as peo­ple think.”

Con­cern about the clo­sures and the var­i­ous in­creas­es that im­pact­ed busi­ness­es and con­sumers was al­so raised by for­mer Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray over the week­end in a post en­ti­tled “An in­con­ve­nient his­to­ry of tax­es!”

Paray said, “In­stead of rolling out many tax­es at once, it could have phased changes over two or three years, with trig­gers based on eco­nom­ic growth or oil and gas re­ceipts. It could have pro­tect­ed ba­sic goods and small op­er­a­tors while ask­ing more from high earn­ers and lux­u­ry spend­ing first. It could have paired every tax with a vis­i­ble com­mit­ment to cut waste or im­prove ser­vices so peo­ple saw where their mon­ey was go­ing. Most of all, it could have opened re­al con­sul­ta­tion with unions, busi­ness groups and com­mu­ni­ties be­fore fi­nal­is­ing any­thing.”

“Peo­ple can live with sac­ri­fice when they see fair­ness and di­rec­tion. They strug­gle with it when it feels sud­den and one-sided. Right now, too many peo­ple feel they were nev­er brought in­to the room,” Paray con­tin­ued, “The re­sult is a mood that is turn­ing sour. You hear it when bar own­ers warn of clo­sures. You hear it when small traders talk about price hikes. You hear it when work­ers ask why their pay slips shrink while ser­vices stay the same. You hear it when peo­ple say they were told one thing in 2025 and got an­oth­er in 2026. That gap be­tween promise and prac­tice is what dri­ves po­lit­i­cal dam­age.”