An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), Vivek Char­ran, has warned that the de­ci­sion by ANSA McAL and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) to with­draw from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) high­lights grow­ing strain be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor dur­ing a dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic tran­si­tion.
Char­ran de­scribed TCL’s de­par­ture as sig­nif­i­cant, not­ing the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al im­por­tance.

“TCL is not just a big man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny in Trinidad, but re­gion­al­ly,” he not­ed.
More con­cern­ing, in his view, is the ap­par­ent break­down in en­gage­ment be­tween ANSA McAL and the TTMA.

“It is a bit alarm­ing to see that talks or ne­go­ti­a­tions have bro­ken down be­tween ANSA and TTMA, be­cause ANSA has been a long­stand­ing part­ner,” he ob­served.
Char­ran framed the de­vel­op­ments with­in what he de­scribed as a broad­er tran­si­tion­al pe­ri­od for the econ­o­my, dri­ven large­ly by the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal chal­lenges.

“We need to un­der­stand that, at this stage, the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to seek rev­enues just to run it­self,” he ex­plained, adding, “There is a short­age of rev­enues, which means even run­ning min­istries month to month is be­com­ing a chal­lenge.”

He point­ed to in­creas­ing pres­sure from pub­lic-sec­tor unions for full cash pay­ments un­der wage agree­ments, warn­ing of the wider im­pli­ca­tions.

“If those pay­outs are made en­tire­ly in cash, it could put the econ­o­my in a very bad sit­u­a­tion,” Char­ran cau­tioned, ques­tion­ing how such com­mit­ments could be fi­nanced when the State it­self is “strapped for cash”.

Ac­cord­ing to Char­ran, the sit­u­a­tion is com­pound­ed by in­her­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ties.

“The last gov­ern­ment left of­fice ow­ing mil­lions in VAT re­pay­ments, along with large sums re­lat­ed to pro­cure­ment and out­stand­ing con­tracts,” he not­ed, along­side heavy lo­cal and for­eign debt oblig­a­tions.

While stress­ing that this was not an at­tempt to de­fend the gov­ern­ment, Char­ran ar­gued that re­cent tax and price re­struc­tur­ing re­flects the sever­i­ty of the fis­cal po­si­tion.

“From the pri­vate sec­tor’s point of view, it af­fects com­pet­i­tive­ness and rev­enue,” he ac­knowl­edged. “But from a broad per­spec­tive, it shows how tough things are on the Gov­ern­ment’s end.”

He em­pha­sised the need for deep­er con­sul­ta­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly on en­er­gy pric­ing. “How wide and how deep the nat­ur­al gas price af­fects man­u­fac­tur­ers is some­thing the sec­tor needs to clear­ly ar­tic­u­late,” Char­ran stat­ed, adding that a co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach could still in­flu­ence out­comes.

“If they or­gan­ise their case and bring it di­rect­ly to the Gov­ern­ment, some sort of so­lu­tion could pos­si­bly be made,” he said.

De­spite the cur­rent ten­sions, Char­ran main­tained that man­u­fac­tur­ing re­mains re­silient.

“It has been one of the most ro­bust sec­tors over the past cou­ple of years and has dri­ven much of the re­cent eco­nom­ic growth,” he said.

Look­ing ahead, he ex­pressed cau­tious op­ti­mism, point­ing to po­ten­tial in­creas­es in gas sup­plies from projects such as Drag­on and Man­a­tee, as well as an­tic­i­pat­ed for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

“Those de­vel­op­ments could have a sig­nif­i­cant rip­ple ef­fect across the econ­o­my,” Char­ran added, “putting mon­ey back in­to peo­ple’s pock­ets and broad­en­ing the in­come base.”

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) sent a let­ter to ANSA McAL and TCL on Christ­mas Eve, de­mand­ing a 77 per cent in­crease in in the price of nat­ur­al gas used in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process.