An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Com­pe­ti­tion in the lo­cal ce­ment mar­ket has now been fur­ther opened up, as ap­proval was grant­ed yes­ter­day for the re­duc­tion in the cur­rent du­ty ap­plic­a­ble to oth­er hy­draulic ce­ments from 20 per cent to 10 per cent un­til June 30, 2025.

This ap­proval was ob­tained at the 58th meet­ing of the Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (COT­ED), which was held on Tues­day and Wednes­day in George­town, Guyana. The meet­ing was chaired by T&T'sMin­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the min­istry said this mea­sure, cou­pled with the ter­mi­na­tion of the quo­ta and reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem for the im­por­ta­tion of ce­ment in Feb­ru­ary 2024, would al­low for the com­mod­i­ty to be im­port­ed from ex­tra-re­gion­al sources at a low­er cost. This would en­sure the avail­abil­i­ty of af­ford­able ce­ment for the con­struc­tion sec­tor and con­sumers.  

It would al­so pro­mote a lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion in the lo­cal mar­ket.  

How­ev­er, the min­istry not­ed that im­port­ed ce­ment will have to meet the cur­rent stan­dard for the prod­uct to en­sure that any im­ports com­ply with rel­e­vant safe­ty and pack­ag­ing re­quire­ments.

Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) is cur­rent­ly the on­ly lo­cal ce­ment provider as Rock Hard Dis­trib­u­tors, which im­port­ed ce­ment from Turkey, de­cid­ed to shut down its op­er­a­tions here in Sep­tem­ber 2021. That de­ci­sion came af­ter the com­pa­ny com­plained that it faced “con­tin­u­ous chal­lenges” from the T&T Gov­ern­ment, “ini­tial­ly in the form of mis­clas­si­fi­ca­tion, which meant we were charged a high­er rate of du­ty than was legal­ly al­lowed for our ce­ment.”

Rock Hard Dis­trib­u­tors is owned by the Ramhit con­struc­tion fam­i­ly.

The for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ryan Ramhit told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that this move is a step in the right di­rec­tion to at­tract com­pe­ti­tion with­in the ce­ment mar­ket.

“The first step they made was re­mov­ing the quo­ta, which was a quo­ta the Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed. Then the re­duc­tion in the tar­iff, which I am hap­py for.”

Asked if Rock­hard will re-en­ter the T&T mar­ket, Ramhit said “Nev­er rule the re­gion­al ce­ment provider out of the mar­ket, as when the com­pa­ny was here, it was a force to reck­on with and peo­ple have been ask­ing for our prod­uct. So, all things equal, I would re­con­sid­er com­ing back in­to the mar­ket.”

In re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia's ques­tion on the low­er­ing of the im­port du­ty on ce­ment, TCL said, "We have not­ed the out­come of the COT­ED meet­ing in re­la­tion to the re­duc­tion of du­ty, quo­ta and the reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem gov­ern­ing the im­por­ta­tion of ex­tra-re­gion­al ce­ment. TCL will con­tin­ue to fo­cus on pro­vid­ing a re­li­able sup­ply of lo­cal­ly pro­duced ce­ment that meets and sur­pass­es in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards through­out the Cari­com re­gion."

In March, the min­istry sent a let­ter to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) on whether they agreed with the min­istry on the sus­pen­sion of the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff (CET) and to al­low the ap­pli­ca­tion of a rate of du­ty of 10 per cent on oth­er hy­draulic ce­ment.

TTCA’s pres­i­dent, Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh replied, “We as con­trac­tors en­cour­age fair com­pe­ti­tion among all play­ers in the in­dus­try, as this as­sists in con­trol­ling in­fla­tion and al­low­ing for fur­ther in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try’s in­fra­struc­ture. While TTCA has al­ways been for the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, it does so with the over­reach­ing ben­e­fit that can be de­rived from the same open and fair mar­ket op­er­a­tional forces. In this par­tic­u­lar case the con­se­quen­tial ef­fect of ar­bi­trage in smoth­er­ing po­ten­tial ar­bi­trary and ran­dom price in­creas­es on lo­cal­ly pro­duced prod­ucts.”

De­ci­sions out of COT­ED  

Al­so, re­gion­al Trade Min­is­ters de­lib­er­at­ed on is­sues re­lat­ed to com­pli­ance with the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, specif­i­cal­ly re­lat­ed to the im­po­si­tion of the cor­rect rates of du­ties on prod­ucts from ex­tra-re­gion­al sources. Mem­ber states were man­dat­ed to en­sure the cor­rect du­ties were be­ing ap­plied on ex­tra-re­gion­al im­ports.  

This mea­sure will en­sure that do­mes­tic prod­ucts are af­ford­ed a lev­el of sup­port against im­ports of prod­ucts in­to oth­er Cari­com mar­kets from ex­tra-re­gion­al coun­tries.