Af­ter many months of spec­u­la­tion, the mo­ment many had feared based on in­ter­na­tion­al trends and sev­er­al hints from the Gov­ern­ment came to pass last Fri­day.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert rose to his feet last Fri­day in the Par­lia­ment to an­nounce the price of gas would be ris­ing af­ter East­er week­end, with pre­mi­um and su­per gaso­line ris­ing by $1 each to $6.75 and  $5.97, with diesel shift­ing up by 50 cents from $3.41 to $3.91. Kerosene will al­so be raised from $1.50 to $3.50.

There had been con­cerns that the sub­sidy would be ad­just­ed as the on­go­ing ten­sion be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine con­tin­ue to push up en­er­gy prices world­wide. When that ten­sion es­ca­lat­ed to a full-scale in­va­sion in late Feb­ru­ary, many coun­tries across the world saw their prices at the pump in­crease.

In March, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley warned that T&T may have to do the same.

He said: “The Gov­ern­ment through the Min­istry of Fi­nance will have to take a de­ci­sion as how much fund­ing we can find to sub­sidise, to take some pres­sure off the pop­u­la­tion can­not be in­su­lat­ed com­plete­ly from oil run­ning at US$120, US$130, US$145 per bar­rel.”
He ex­plained that since 2002, there had been a short­fall in the sub­sidy fund.

“In 2001, that was the last year where the sub­sidy fund matched the sub­sidy paid out where there was no short­fall,” he said, ex­plain­ing then the sub­sidy was main­tained at a vary­ing ex­pense to the gov­ern­ment.

This was fur­ther ex­plained by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in a se­ries of tweets on Tues­day.

Im­bert said: “Gaso­line is pur­chased by coun­tries at an ex-re­fin­ery price, based on the cost of ac­quir­ing and pro­cess­ing oil. It costs us in T&T $7B a year to pur­chase fu­el, which is sold to mo­torists for $5B. The $2B dif­fer­ence is paid by tax­pay­ers, which could be used for many oth­er pur­pos­es.”

He ex­plained that the mon­ey ab­sorbed could be utilised for oth­er ex­pens­es of the gov­ern­ment.

“The $2 bil­lion fu­el sub­sidy is not in­come. It is an un­bud­get­ed ad­di­tion­al ex­pense. If we have to spend an ad­di­tion­al un­bud­get­ed $2 bil­lion in 2022 on this, the re­al ques­tion is: what ex­ist­ing ar­eas of ex­pen­di­ture would the Gov­ern­ment have to re­duce to make up that ad­di­tion­al $2B ex­pense?” he asked on Twit­ter.

Row­ley’s com­ments in March how­ev­er set off a slew of peo­ple search­ing for a way to save on gas, by switch­ing to CNG.

Rishi Ram­roops­ingh of ANSA Mo­tors’ Bur­mac CNG team con­firmed that in­ter­est in con­ver­sions shot up in March.

“Let me tell you, since the com­ments were made by the PM we’ve seen al­most like a 75 per cent in­crease in in­ter­est in CNG. So Bur­mac CNG, which is, ANSA Mo­tors is the com­pa­ny that I work for. There’s a di­vi­sion called the Bur­mac CNG which deals specif­i­cal­ly with our af­ter­mar­ket in­stal­la­tions. So you’re talk­ing about your nor­mal com­bus­tion en­gine be­ing con­vert­ed to CNG. And we’ve ac­tu­al­ly seen about a 75 per cent in­crease in the in­ter­est,” said Ram­roops­ingh.

“So so­cial me­dia pages, phone calls, emails, What­sApp, a gen­er­al in­crease in the amount of in­quiries as to how to do the con­ver­sion, and what it en­tails and the cost and just the whole 180 de­grees about CNG.”

Over at Du­more En­ter­pris­es Ltd, the de­mand for CNG con­ver­sions al­so in­creased fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment and sub­se­quent T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle high­light­ing the sub­sidy costs.

Ra­jeev Rames­sar of Du­more con­firmed con­ver­sion re­quests be­came fre­quent.

“So pri­or to the an­nounce­ment, we may have done prob­a­bly like one or two con­ver­sions a week. Now every sin­gle day, we have a con­ver­sion, or we have book­ings for the up­com­ing week,” he said, “I would say that we may have been be­tween 10 and 20 per cent, oc­cu­pied, or 10 or 20 per cent booked up, but af­ter the an­nounce­ment is when you would have seen that the en­tire week now is booked for con­ver­sions. So what would have been 15 or 20 per cent is some­thing like 80 per cent.”

Rames­sar al­so played down crit­i­cisms that CNG is an out­dat­ed fu­el, as he point­ed out it was the per­fect fu­el to push the tran­si­tion to clean­er en­er­gy con­sump­tion for most giv­en its price point com­pared to new elec­tric and hy­brid ve­hi­cles.

“It will be very the most suit­able tran­si­tion fu­el. Be­cause ei­ther way, you were to look at it, you have ve­hi­cles on the road that are over 10 years old, which is a typ­i­cal ve­hi­cle that some­body would own right? Those ve­hi­cles are prime can­di­dates for con­ver­sions. Our con­ver­sion is to $13,000. A new elec­tric ve­hi­cle, I think, the one that Massy launch re­cent­ly might have been $360,000 and the oth­er al­ter­na­tive in a for­eign used in the Nis­san Leaf. And I think that up­wards $200,000,” he said, stat­ing that for the av­er­age man would find it eas­i­er to pay $13,000 right now as op­posed to buy­ing elec­tric cur­rent­ly.

The NGC CNG com­pa­ny al­so con­firmed there had been an in­crease in CNG con­sump­tion this year with March sales be­ing the high­est in the com­pa­ny’s his­to­ry.

The com­pa­ny told the Busi­ness Guardian, “The de­mand for CNG con­tin­ues its up­ward trend with March 2022 record­ing the high­est sin­gle months sales ever, of 1.7 mil­lion litres, an in­crease of 17 per cent over the pre­ced­ing month (Feb­ru­ary 2022). With the con­tin­ued re­open­ing of the coun­try, fol­low­ing the COVID-19 re­stric­tions, NGC CNG ex­pects even high­er sales in the months to come.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, there had been a surge in de­mand for the Hon­da City, which is sold with CNG kits al­ready in­stalled.

This was par­tic­u­lar­ly no­table as sales ap­peared to be on the in­crease, de­spite the price of City in­creas­ing last year af­ter the re­moval of tax con­ces­sions on mo­tor ve­hi­cles in 2021 which saw the price of the City in­crease by $20,000.

“The Hon­da City has been for the past cou­ple of years one of the hot sell­ers at ANSA Mo­tors just be­cause of where the price point was at. Giv­en the vat ex­emp­tion that would have ex­ist­ed pri­or to the last bud­get. Now I know when they read the last bud­get they said the VAT would be rein­tro­duced and the price of the car went up. It didn’t change the fact that the in­ter­est in the car was still there. And it con­tin­ued to re­main one of the top-sell­ing mod­els that we have in this class,” said Ram­roops­ingh.

He con­firmed to the Busi­ness Guardian that about 50 new Hon­da City ve­hi­cles were be­ing sold month­ly in 2020 but fol­low­ing the price in­crease, there was a slight dip in sales to 42 new units be­ing sold a month in 2021.
How­ev­er, the 2022 num­bers are al­ready well ahead of both years.

“At the end of Q1 this year, we av­er­age we av­er­aged about 60 units,” said Ram­roops­ingh.

 He said how­ev­er, the draw con­tin­ued to be the re­duced price at the gas pump.

“When they re­moved the con­ces­sion, the cus­tomers would have still ex­pressed in­ter­est in the car be­cause of the eco­nom­ics of it. So for CNG it’s a $14 fill and you get your 150 kilo­me­tres on the fill, as op­posed to on petrol and that’s what does what is caus­ing this type of move­ment to the unit,” said Ram­roops­ingh who not­ed that the car was es­pe­cial­ly favoured by mid­dle-in­come fam­i­lies.

Oth­er car deal­er­ships have al­so ramped the ad­ver­tis­ing of their hy­brid and elec­tric op­tions, with Massy Mo­tors host­ing an event pro­mot­ing its Hyundai Kona and Ion­iq elec­tric ve­hi­cle mod­els on April 9, one day af­ter the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment con­cern­ing the pend­ing gas price in­crease.

ANSA Mo­tors al­so an­nounced the ar­rival of the Hy­brid Hon­da HRV this week, as cus­tomers con­tin­u­ous­ly asked for the ve­hi­cle which had on­ly been avail­able through the for­eign-used mar­ket.
“We ac­tu­al­ly had no oth­er choice with the hy­brid. The grey mar­ket may have brought the prod­uct, the same mod­el be­fore we did as the deal­er­ship. And we had a lot of in­quiries com­ing from cus­tomers as to when we’re go­ing to bring it what’s go­ing to hap­pen,” said Ram­roops­ingh.

The ar­rival of the ve­hi­cle at the ANSA show­room al­so comes af­ter an­oth­er an­nounce­ment by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter that ex­emp­tions would be re­turn­ing in May.

Im­bert said, “Sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic have in­ten­si­fied with the war in Ukraine, ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the sup­ply of ful­ly elec­tric cars. As a re­sult, to en­cour­age re­duced fu­el con­sump­tion, small hy­brid cars will be ex­empt­ed from all tax­es in T&T from mid-May 2022.”

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