GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

A dis­as­ter.

This is what T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) pres­i­dent Visham Bab­wah is pre­dict­ing if Gov­ern­ment de­cides to phase out the use of Su­per gaso­line as a fu­el in T&T and on­ly al­lows the use of Pre­mi­um gaso­line.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia’s Lead Ed­i­tor Busi­ness Cur­tis Williams, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan ad­mit­ted that the mat­ter has gone to the Cab­i­net but said no fi­nal de­ci­sion has been tak­en.

Stake­hold­ers say if the Gov­ern­ment de­cides on phas­ing out Su­per gaso­line it is like­ly to have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on mo­torists, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of whom use Su­per be­cause it is less ex­pen­sive than pre­mi­um. It could al­so po­ten­tial­ly have the knock-on ef­fect of high­er taxi fares and cause in­fla­tion­ary pres­sure.

Bab­wah, how­ev­er, is call­ing for con­sul­ta­tion with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers on the mat­ter, say­ing such a de­ci­sion can­not in­volve Gov­ern­ment alone.

Call­ing on Khan to pro­vide rea­sons for the pro­pos­al to re­move Su­per gaso­line, Bab­wah said, “This is why we have a democ­ra­cy to en­gage the views of every­one be­cause this is a crit­i­cal mat­ter. What are the sta­tis­tics say­ing for the re­moval of Su­per fu­el? Is it that the fu­el is sub­stan­dard, be­cause as it is, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mo­torists use Su­per? If they should stop im­por­ta­tion of Su­per, then peo­ple will have no choice but to use Pre­mi­um.”

Bab­wah said with the cur­rent cost of Pre­mi­um gaso­line be­ing $5.75 per litre, this will have neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions for the mo­tor­ing and trav­el­ling pub­lic. Fur­ther­more, he said the price to im­port new and used cars will in­crease should this mea­sure be im­ple­ment­ed.

“Once peo­ple have to pay more for fu­el this will have a dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect across the econ­o­my. All cit­i­zens will def­i­nite­ly feel the im­pact, low­er and mid­dle-in­come cit­i­zens es­pe­cial­ly,” he said.

Cou­pled with this, Bab­wah said the coun­try’s for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion has got­ten worse since the shut­ting down of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery.

“If it is cost­ing the coun­try more US dol­lars now to im­port fu­el, then the on­ly rea­son I could see for the Gov­ern­ment want­i­ng to phase out Su­per fu­el is that they will prof­it more from Pre­mi­um fu­el,” Bab­wah said.

He added that Gov­ern­ment’s CNG ini­tia­tive is al­so un­sus­tain­able, as it will even­tu­al­ly be­come ob­so­lete.

Guardian Me­di­al Ltd al­so reached out to Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Robin Nar­i­nesingh but he said it was too ear­ly to spec­u­late on the pos­si­ble out­comes of the mat­ter. How­ev­er, he said he in­tend­ed to meet with his team to dis­cuss the is­sue, which he not­ed was an im­por­tant one.