The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) yes­ter­day called for a phased ap­proach to the in­crease in the price of nat­ur­al gas to light man­u­fac­tur­ers, warn­ing that ris­ing costs for man­u­fac­tur­ers could have neg­a­tive knock-on ef­fects for con­sumers and ex­ports.

In a news re­lease in which it recog­nised that re­form was nec­es­sary, the T&T Cham­ber said that “any re­cal­i­bra­tion of en­er­gy and util­i­ty pric­ing should be ap­proached holis­ti­cal­ly, trans­par­ent­ly, and through na­tion­al di­a­logue, with the clear ob­jec­tive of en­sur­ing that eco­nom­ic re­turns ul­ti­mate­ly re­bound to the ben­e­fit of all cit­i­zens, while safe­guard­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness, em­ploy­ment, and ex­port-led growth.”

The busi­ness group­ing said that “a phased, rules-based ap­proach to sub­sidy ad­just­ment in­formed by mar­ket con­di­tions, in­clud­ing fluc­tu­a­tions in glob­al en­er­gy prices.”

Last week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that NGC had of­fi­cial­ly in­formed lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers that the price of nat­ur­al gas would in­crease by the end of Jan­u­ary.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the his­tor­i­cal con­text, the T&T Cham­ber said man­u­fac­tur­ers have ben­e­fit­ted from nat­ur­al gas pric­ing arrange­ments that formed part of a wider fa­cil­i­ta­tive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment es­tab­lished by the State to sup­port eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. It added that elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter sub­si­dies re­main im­por­tant to main­tain­ing busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

These arrange­ments, the Cham­ber said, re­flect the re­al­i­ties of op­er­at­ing in T&T and re­main rel­e­vant un­der the coun­try’s Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Vi­sion for eco­nom­ic growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, which em­pha­sis­es pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship as a key dri­ver.

At the same time, it not­ed that T&T is fac­ing an un­avoid­able struc­tur­al ad­just­ment chal­lenge in an econ­o­my that has long re­lied on sub­si­dies, and cau­tioned that such changes must be care­ful­ly man­aged.

The ob­jec­tive, it said, must be to en­sure that eco­nom­ic re­turns ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit cit­i­zens, while safe­guard­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness, em­ploy­ment and ex­port-led growth.

On nat­ur­al gas us­age, the Cham­ber said the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor ac­counts for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.5 per cent of to­tal gas pro­duc­tion by NGC, while com­pris­ing more than 100 man­u­fac­tur­ers that em­ploy thou­sands of peo­ple and con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the econ­o­my. Con­sid­er­a­tion, it said, must be giv­en to the im­pact that high­er gas prices will have on end con­sumers through in­creased prices, as well as on the com­pet­i­tive­ness of lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts for ex­port.

Ex­pec­ta­tions were al­so out­lined for the Gov­ern­ment to im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy with­in lo­cal gov­ern­ment and state en­ter­pris­es, so that ad­di­tion­al rev­enues gen­er­at­ed from mea­sures such as in­creased gas prices are not used to sup­port in­ef­fi­cient agen­cies.

With­in a co­or­di­nat­ed pol­i­cy frame­work, the Cham­ber said se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to op­tions in­clud­ing tiered nat­ur­al gas pric­ing based on con­sump­tion lev­els and in­dus­try clas­si­fi­ca­tion, pro­gres­sive me­ter­ing for elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble house­holds, and a phased, rules-based ap­proach to sub­sidy ad­just­ments in­formed by mar­ket con­di­tions, in­clud­ing glob­al en­er­gy price move­ments.