The im­port du­ty on hy­draulic ce­ment will be re­duced from 50 per cent to 20 per cent from Jan­u­ary and im­port li­cences for all types of ce­ment will be ex­pand­ed to 150,000 tonnes—plus Gov­ern­ment is en­cour­ag­ing more play­ers to man­u­fac­ture ce­ment.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, con­firmed this yes­ter­day as she spoke about mea­sures to bring re­lief to the pub­lic fol­low­ing Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed’s ce­ment price hike. She was re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s ques­tions in the Sen­ate.

Gopee-Scoon said on learn­ing that the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er in­tend­ed to in­crease the ce­ment price, Cab­i­net de­cid­ed that the Trade Min­istry should ap­proach the Cari­com agency re­spon­si­ble for trade and eco­nom­ic is­sues to seek sus­pen­sion of the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff (im­port du­ty) on oth­er hy­draulic ce­ment from 50 per cent to 20 per cent. This would be­gin in Jan­u­ary 2022, end­ing in De­cem­ber 2022.

She added “Plus there is an ex­ist­ing quo­ta on im­port li­cences regime for all types of ce­ment which at the mo­ment is 75,000 tonnes. We’ll ex­pand that de­ci­sion to 150,000 tonnes from Jan­u­ary.”

“Gov­ern­ment sought to bring re­lief to cit­i­zens bear­ing in mind com­pe­ti­tion will keep the mar­ket in check and prices will re­main low­est with en­try of ex­tra-re­gion­al ce­ment in­to T&T. We recog­nise the im­por­tance of keep­ing the ce­ment prices low­est pos­si­ble in­clud­ing for the con­struc­tion in­dus­try.”

Gopee-Scoon said it’s im­pos­si­ble for Gov­ern­ment to say ex­act­ly what the price would be with the changes.

“What will like­ly hap­pen is that, those au­tho­rised li­cen­sors un­der the quo­ta regime will bring in ce­ment that will en­ter the mar­ket at 20 per cent and that com­petion will keep the mar­ket in check.”

She said Gov­ern­ment will al­so en­cour­age any play­ers to do ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing. There are five reg­is­tered im­porters and so far for 2021 on­ly one has brought in ce­ment. Gopee-Scoon said there’s in­ter­est in the re­gion for fur­ther man­u­fac­tur­ers of ce­ment.

Re­gard­ing farm­ers’ warn­ings about con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed meat, Gopee-Scoon said the Health Min­istry is re­search­ing re­ports and tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure the pub­lic is aware of the cir­cum­stances to en­sure no con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed meats reach peo­ple. If any­thing is sus­pect­ed by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture’s di­vi­sion —which re­ceives re­ports on live an­i­mals—the Health Min­istry is alert­ed to dis­pose of car­cass­es and en­sure pro­to­cols to curb con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed meat from en­ter­ing the mar­ket.

Mean­while, re­gard­ing re­ports of “price goug­ing” by pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness­es Gopee-Scoon not­ed the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s (FAO) Food Price In­dex re­vealed that since Sep­tem­ber 2020, food prices glob­al­ly have es­ca­lat­ed by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 per cent, reach­ing lev­els not seen since 2011.

“Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank Ju­ly 2021 Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin, the av­er­age growth in food in­fla­tion over the first 6 months of 2021 was 2.8 per cent. How­ev­er, more re­cent da­ta from the CBTT on­line data­base re­veals that food price in­fla­tion was 4.9 per cent in Ju­ly 2021, and 5.7 per cent in Sep­tem­ber 2021.”

In­fla­tion was not on­ly due to T&T’s po­si­tion as a food im­porter but al­so to weath­er changes and the glob­al pan­dem­ic’s im­pact on ship­ping, food pro­duc­tion and re­lat­ed is­sues.

She added, “Based on the track­ing of the Cen­tral Bank’s Re­tail Price In­dex (RPI), which shows how the bas­ket of goods price changes over time, it can be said the in­fla­tion is rel­a­tive­ly mod­er­ate and not in­dica­tive of on­go­ing price goug­ing in T&T.”

Gopee-Scoon, cit­ing high­er in­fla­tion rates in the US, Cana­da, Unit­ed King­dom, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica, de­tailed the Gov­ern­ment’s mea­sures in­clud­ing VAT re­moval on foods,

On an­oth­er mat­ter, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said the En­er­gy Min­is­ter will be mak­ing a state­ment ahead on the “full ex­tent” of the AV Drilling court award.