Yvonne Webb

Short­ly af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai an­nounced an al­most 50 per cent in­crease in the price of pre­mi­um gas, sev­er­al gas sta­tions in south and cen­tral Trinidad closed their pumps say­ing they had no gas. Dri­vers in Cou­va said sev­er­al gas sta­tions were sell­ing on­ly su­per gaso­line, say­ing they had run out of pre­mi­um gas. Some even closed for the en­tire day. In San Fer­nan­do, long lines were seen at the Rush­worth Street NP Sta­tion. There was no rush how­ev­er on Carib Street or at the Mon Re­pos ser­vice sta­tions. How­ev­er, the ser­vice sta­tion at Pointe-a-Pierre Road was closed short­ly af­ter the bud­get an­nounce­ment, with em­ploy­ees claim­ing they had run out of gas.

In his first bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Howai an­nounced an in­crease in the price of pre­mi­um gaso­line from $4 to $5.75 a litre. San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Daphne Bartlett agreed with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar the in­crease would on­ly af­fect on­ly about six per cent of the pop­u­la­tion who had high-end ve­hi­cles. She said those who could af­ford to buy the BMWs and Au­d­is could af­ford to pay the in­creased price.

How­ev­er, the move was met with ap­pre­hen­sion by dri­vers, who said it was the first step to­wards the to­tal re­moval of the gas sub­sidy. One woman who said she had just re­tired and bought a new car, which used pre­mi­um gas, de­nied she was rich and said the in­crease would af­fect her bud­get.

One man said a lot of the cheap­er new cars al­so wee us­ing pre­mi­um fu­el while the high-end SU­Vs and vans were us­ing diesel. Oth­er dri­vers said they were sur­prised by the in­crease since it con­sti­tut­ed a "new tax" which the Prime Min­is­ter had promised would not be added. Howai has linked the in­creased gas price to the de­vel­op­ment of a com­pre­hen­sive busi­ness plan which would in­vest $1.5 bil­lion in con­vert­ing some 90,000 gaso­line ve­hi­cles to com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG). He said that would be an al­ter­na­tive trans­porta­tion fu­el over a five-year pe­ri­od as the Gov­ern­ment con­struct­ed mul­ti-fu­el sta­tions and in­stalled the pipeline in­fra­struc­ture to sta­tions.