An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Some busi­ness groups are call­ing for a meet­ing with the Gov­ern­ment over the elec­tric­i­ty rate in­crease pro­posed by the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC).

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) in re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the Guardian Me­dia on the rate in­crease, said it would on­ly serve to add se­vere stress and strains to the fi­nan­cial bur­dens al­ready press­ing the small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) sec­tor. The busi­ness group al­so said a rate hike would most like­ly lead to an rise in costs, which would be passed on to the end cus­tomer.

Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce Pres­i­dent and CR­BC di­rec­tor, Ang­ie Jairam, called on the Gov­ern­ment, the RIC, and the coun­try as a whole, to deeply con­sid­er the hard­ships ex­pe­ri­enced by the SMEs, the work­ing poor, and the mid­dle class when con­sid­er­ing the pro­posed elec­tric­i­ty rate hikes.

“We are plead­ing again to find a way to man­age this is­sue care­ful­ly and con­sid­er in­cre­men­tal in­creas­es. With re­gards to the busi­ness sec­tor, the SMEs, the eco­nom­ic down­turn caused by sev­er­al fac­tors has al­ready eat­en out the sur­vival in­come and more pres­sures from rate in­creas­es will im­pact even more. That can cause busi­ness­es not to be com­pet­i­tive and have to shut their doors and send home work­ers,” Jairam lament­ed.

She said the Gov­ern­ment has to re­think this ap­proach, as many own­ers can­not af­ford it all at once.

“We too have fam­i­lies that are de­pen­dent on busi­ness for a fair stan­dard of liv­ing. How can we ex­pand our busi­ness­es, if, at the mo­ment, we are break­ing even? Busi­ness clo­sure and un­em­ploy­ment would im­pact on col­lec­tion of tax­es for the coun­try’s up­keep. Let us not shoot our­selves in the foot,” Jairam in­di­cat­ed.

She hopes the promise of the Drag­on gas field and Lo­ran Man­a­tee gas fields will pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the pop­u­la­tion in a few years, and we will be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to af­ford in­creas­es and hope­ful­ly, this would im­prove the stan­dard of liv­ing.

The Siparia Cham­ber of Com­merce states, “The SMEs would face a dif­fi­cult task in stay­ing afloat, and even busi­ness sur­vival. Al­so, it is said that com­pa­nies with­in in­dus­tri­al es­tates and gov­ern­ment min­istries and de­part­ments, have their elec­tric­i­ty bills sub­sidised, but they are ow­ing T&TEC mil­lions of dol­lars. If this debt is re­cov­ered, there would be lit­tle or no need for this ex­treme hike in prices.”

Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, vice chair of the CR­BC and pres­i­dent of the East­ern Busi­ness & Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion said that al­most all of the RIC con­sul­ta­tions, cham­bers, and as­so­ci­a­tions have cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed that they strong­ly dis­agree with the in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty rates, and it seems that the RIC is not lis­ten­ing to their con­cerns. He said the RIC host­ed its con­sul­ta­tions as a pub­lic re­la­tions ac­tiv­i­ty.

“If T&TEC agrees to im­ple­ment these rate hikes, then the CR­BC will have to seek a meet­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss these mat­ters fur­ther.”

Al­so, the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber and In­dus­try of Com­merce pres­i­dent, Bal­dath Ma­haraj, said ful­ly un­der­stands the ra­tio­nale for the rate in­crease, giv­en that T&T’s rates are the low­est in the re­gion.

“Our is­sue is the tim­ing of the in­crease and the so­cial im­pact as well as the im­pact on busi­ness­es.

Busi­ness­es just came out of the pan­dem­ic, and most small busi­ness­es made good use of the gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee SME loans. These loans will be due and payable from next year. Ef­fec­tive­ly re­tail prices will in­crease, es­pe­cial­ly at the su­per­mar­kets, and this will im­pact the al­ready stressed low­er-in­come group,” he out­lined.

As such Ma­haraj said the cham­ber is mak­ing a call to the au­thor­i­ties to meet and dis­cuss the tim­ing of this rate in­crease as this is akin to an in­crease in fu­el prices which will im­pact the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion

Mean­while, Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee said “We met with the RIC and ad­vised that our po­si­tion was for a phased ap­proach. I ex­pect all of that would be in­clud­ed in their rec­om­men­da­tions to the Gov­ern­ment on the is­sue. I al­so be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment has to rat­i­fy its po­si­tion be­fore any ob­jec­tions from us as stake­hold­ers.”