Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day con­firmed that the glob­al sup­ply chain clogs at ma­jor US and UK ports will have a “very se­ri­ous” rip­ple ef­fect on the im­por­ta­tion of goods to T&T.

“How could we not be im­pact­ed? We are a trad­ing coun­try. Much of our life is im­port/ex­port, so this is very se­ri­ous for us, as it af­fects the whole world,” he said in re­sponse to ques­tions about the im­por­ta­tion of goods in­to the coun­try as the world con­tin­ues to be crip­pled by dis­rupt­ed sup­ply chains.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, the ports in Los An­ge­les are so clogged that up to yes­ter­day, some 200,000 car­go ships were wait­ing to en­ter and of­fload.

Oth­er ports were fac­ing much of the same sit­u­a­tion, with long lines of car­go ves­sels wait­ing to of­fload, load and leave but un­able to move.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that the busy glob­al Christ­mas time goods de­liv­ery will be im­pact­ed and con­sumers in the US and UK have been warned that it will be months be­fore the sit­u­a­tion is back to nor­mal.

There is al­so the re­lat­ed in­fla­tion that will see a steady in­crease in the cost of goods.

The same will hap­pen here, the Prime Min­is­ter warned.

“Un­avail­abil­i­ty of the whole range of the out­comes of im­ports, gen­er­al short­ages and sig­nif­i­cant cost in­creas­es across the board,” Row­ley said.

“Freight costs have sky­rock­et­ed. There is a sig­nif­i­cant push fac­tor on the cost of im­port­ed food.”

He added, “That is why we have en­cour­aged the di­et changes to in­volve lo­cal fresh pro­duce which is cheap­er and in­ci­den­tal­ly, much health­i­er.”

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning yes­ter­day added his con­cern and con­firmed that the min­istry was brac­ing for the high­er prices.

“We do ex­pect an in­crease in cost for com­modi­ties and some im­port­ed goods,” he said.

Man­ning said there was still some good news though.

“This is good in that we ex­pect greater oil and gas rev­enues in the short to medi­um term but bad in that the price of some im­port­ed items could see an in­crease,” he said.

“It is one of the rea­sons the Min­istry of Fi­nance chose to re­move VAT and im­port du­ties on sev­er­al sta­ples or ba­sic food items.”

Man­ning added, “Hope­ful­ly, we can al­le­vi­ate some of these in­creased costs through fis­cal mea­sures that will cre­ate jobs and im­prove in­come lev­els across the econ­o­my while pro­tect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble per­sons in our so­ci­ety.”

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon, said it was not just im­port­ed food that would be hard­er to get.

“All im­ports are im­pact­ed, food and non-food. These are ex­i­gen­cies be­yond our con­trol,” she said.

She said that Gov­ern­ment took the po­si­tion of ze­ro-rat­ing many food items, with em­pha­sis on the very ba­sic ones which all con­sumers use

“We con­tin­ue to re­move du­ties on the ba­sic items,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon said that lo­cal im­ports in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing are al­so im­pact­ed.

Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Ra­jiv Diptee, yes­ter­day shared his frus­tra­tion with the en­tire ship­ping dis­rup­tions.

“When you have 200,000 ships loi­ter­ing off the coast of LA wait­ing to dock and some of them leav­ing out of sheer frus­tra­tion, it doesn’t bode well for de­liv­ery sched­ules, as the rip­ples go out. Amer­i­ca is ad­dress­ing short­ages and de­lays. They are tend­ing to them­selves first, us af­ter,” he said.

“Raw ma­te­ri­als and price hikes in those, as well as im­ports by some, are ex­pect­ed. It is im­por­tant to note that this year has been an aber­ra­tion in the fre­quen­cy of price in­creas­es due to the pan­dem­ic.”

Diptee added, “We have nev­er had a year like this on record.”