An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) pres­i­dent Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh says fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the fourth price in­crease in ce­ment in just over two years, the con­struc­tion sec­tor will be placed un­der strain in what is ex­pect­ed to be one of its busiest pe­ri­ods.

On Mon­day, lo­cal ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­er Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) an­nounced that the price of the com­mod­i­ty will in­crease on Feb­ru­ary 19.

The new price of the 42.5 kilo­gram (kg) bag of Pre­mi­um Plus ce­ment VAT in­clu­sive is $57.38. The cur­rent ce­ment price is $53.81, which is an in­crease of 6.63 per cent.

Eco Ce­ment in 42.5kg sacks will now be $52.88 VAT in­clu­sive, while the cur­rent price stood at $49.10. That is an in­crease of 7.69 per cent

Sul­phate Re­sis­tant in 42.5kg sacks will now in­crease to $148.50 VAT in­clu­sive from $139.08, an in­crease of 6.77 per cent.

The no­tice of the in­crease was sent to hard­ware stores and large cus­tomers on Mon­day af­ter­noon.

Ma­habirs­ingh ques­tioned the tim­ing of the in­crease as he said ce­ment is too es­sen­tial to the con­struc­tion in­dus­try to ex­pe­ri­ence this rapid price in­crease.

“In the last 26 months, the in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­enced ce­ment price in­creas­es four times.”

These price in­creas­es first be­gan in De­cem­ber 2021, a cou­ple of months af­ter St Lu­cia-based ce­ment dis­trib­u­tor Rock Hard Ce­ment with­drew from the mar­ket af­ter los­ing a law­suit filed over the Gov­ern­ment’s move to in­tro­duce a quo­ta and li­cens­ing regime for the im­por­ta­tion of ce­ment.

The TTCA Pres­i­dent added since then the price has cu­mu­la­tive­ly risen by over 30 per cent.

TCL in­creased prices on March 20, 2023, five per cent for ECO ce­ment and eight per cent for pre­mi­um plus.

The com­pa­ny said then, “Ce­ment prices are in fact set to be mar­gin­al­ly ad­just­ed, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion some of the ris­ing cost fac­tors with which TCL is faced.”

In De­cem­ber 2021, TCL raised the price of a 42.5kg bag of ECO ce­ment by eight per cent to $43.71 VAT-in­clu­sive, and by 15 per cent to $46.56 VAT-in­clu­sive for a pre­mi­um of the same weight.