The lead­ers of two of the groups rep­re­sent­ing lo­cal builders and con­trac­tors are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce com­pe­ti­tion in­to the do­mes­tic ce­ment mar­ket to sta­bilise the price of the com­mod­i­ty.

The call for ac­tion by the Gov­ern­ment fol­lows the an­nounce­ment by Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) on Mon­day that its prices will in­crease on Feb­ru­ary 19.

Guardian Me­dia cal­cu­lat­ed that the ce­ment price in­creas­es would be be­tween 6.63 per cent and 7.69 per cent based on TCL’s ini­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion to hard­ware stores and con­trac­tors.

Fazir Khan, the pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC), told the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day: “Com­pe­ti­tion will al­ways dri­ve prices down and the Gov­ern­ment needs to con­sid­er this when they re­vis­it the du­ty be­ing im­posed on im­port­ed ma­te­ri­als.”

Khan told Busi­ness Guardian that the rea­sons giv­en by TCL for the in­crease may be jus­ti­fied, but there were not enough de­tails on it.

He said any in­crease in raw ma­te­ri­als will re­sult in high­er prices of the fi­nal prod­uct, but the or­der of mag­ni­tude of the in­crease will not be di­rect­ly pro­por­tion­al.

“So an in­crease of say 7 per cent in the price of ce­ment may re­sult in less than one per cent in­crease in con­crete work. The in­dus­try is faced with many oth­er con­tribut­ing fac­tors that have been in­creas­ing like steel and re­bar, ag­gre­gates and labour. So over­all the price of con­struc­tion has been go­ing up post COVID-19,” said the JCC pres­i­dent.

Al­so shar­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was the Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) pres­i­dent, Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh, who said com­pe­ti­tion with­in the ce­ment mar­ket is need­ed to en­sure the end user re­ceives the best price.

“While the TTCA will sup­port lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing and the cre­ation of em­ploy­ment, some di­a­logue needs to take place if there is some in­cen­tive. So that ce­ment prices will not move every 10, 12, or 14 months,” Ma­habirs­ingh sug­gest­ed.

Re­gard­ing the up­com­ing ce­ment price in­crease and how it would af­fect con­trac­tors, Ma­habirs­ingh said the con­trac­tors would ap­proach their clients about the high­er prices, but the ques­tion is whether the client can af­ford it, giv­en that most projects op­er­ate on a tight bud­get, so di­a­logue will be need­ed.

Asked if it made sense for con­trac­tors to stock up on the ce­ment be­fore the price in­creas­es on Feb­ru­ary 19, the TTCA head said that ce­ment has a fi­nite shelf life, there­fore it can­not be stored in­def­i­nite­ly.

“Per­sons un­der­stand­ing their project’s needs would ramp up their pur­chas­es. Each con­trac­tor will know how to man­age their stock, due to the ce­ment’s shelf life,” he said.

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.”

The com­pa­ny is owned by the Ramhit con­struc­tion fam­i­ly.

The for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ryan Ramhit told Busi­ness Guardian that the com­pa­ny would be open to any dis­cus­sions with the Gov­ern­ment or any stake­hold­ers to re­turn to the do­mes­tic mar­ket.

Ramhit said for the five years Rock Hard ce­ment was sold do­mes­ti­cal­ly, the brand did very well.

“Hard­ware and cus­tomers ac­cept­ed the brand and the prod­uct. Al­so, we cre­at­ed a lot of em­ploy­ment and even up to this day em­ploy­ees who used to work with the com­pa­ny will al­ways call and say to the boss, don’t for­get me when the com­pa­ny restarts in Trinidad. So yes, if the Gov­ern­ment reach­es out to me to en­gage in di­a­logue, I am al­ways open to dis­cus­sions,” Ramhit dis­closed.

Speak­ing about TCL’s an­nounced price in­creas­es, he said it is the con­sumers that are fac­ing the hike and the Gov­ern­ment should in­ter­vene in the mat­ter.

“Once ce­ment ris­es, every­thing in con­struc­tion ris­es.”

Rock Hard, the brand, op­er­ates in oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, be­sides Trinidad.

When con­tact­ed about the mat­ter of TCL in­creas­ing prices, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Sen­a­tor Paula Gopee-Scoon said: “We are ac­tive­ly re­view­ing and eval­u­at­ing pos­si­ble rec­om­men­da­tions.”

The Busi­ness Guardian vis­it­ed a few hard­ware stores in the Port-of-Spain area and many cus­tomers ex­pressed their dis­ap­point­ment.

Mar­garet Thomas from Diego Mar­tin said she came to a hard­ware store in St James to stock up on the ce­ment be­fore the in­crease takes ef­fect in 13 days, as she is start­ing re­fur­bish­ing works on her home in two weeks.

“Why did TCL have to raise prices again? The ce­ment com­pa­ny seems to be do­ing this every year and some­thing needs to be done. This mo­nop­oly must stop,” a dis­turbed Thomas lament­ed.

Paul James of Laven­tille, who is a con­struc­tion work­er, said this is not good for the in­dus­try, which is al­ready strug­gling and to put an ad­di­tion­al price in­crease on clients would be dif­fi­cult and this could lead to con­struc­tion com­pa­nies lay­ing off work­ers. Kevin John of Ch­agua­nas said be­cause TCL has the mo­nop­oly, they will con­tin­ue to in­crease ce­ment prices, and it is un­for­tu­nate the con­sumers have no oth­er choice but to pay the in­crease.

The new ex-fac­to­ry price of the 42.5 kilo­gramme (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.

As the an­nounced TCL prices are ex-fac­to­ry, they do not in­clude the mark-up of the hard­ware stores.

Two of the hard­wares that car­ry TCL ce­ment prod­ucts, cur­rent­ly sell the Eco Ce­ment in 42.5 kg sacks at $58.74 VAT in­clu­sive and $64 VAT in­clu­sive.

A work­er said fol­low­ing the Busi­ness Dai­ly’s sto­ry about the in­crease, he ex­pect­ed to see a rush at the hard­ware store for the rest of the week.

Many hard­ware own­ers did not want to speak on the record, as they in­di­cat­ed that the mat­ter is a sen­si­tive one.

One own­er, who asked not to be named, said the tim­ing of the in­crease is very bad as hard­ware stores are strug­gling to make a prof­it, as a re­sult of the con­struc­tion not be­ing as ro­bust as it once was.

“The Gov­ern­ment ran Rock Hard out of the coun­try and now TCL is rais­ing prices year on year. This must be dealt with be­cause this can lead to more peo­ple be­ing out of jobs, which un­for­tu­nate­ly can re­sult in more crime,” the own­er re­vealed.

In No­vem­ber, TCL record­ed a net in­come of $169.24 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, a 1.28 per cent in­crease com­pared with the $167.09 mil­lion the ce­ment-pro­duc­ing com­pa­ny re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

TCL’s rev­enue for the pe­ri­od from Jan­u­ary 1 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023 to­talled $1.70 bil­lion, which was 9.64 per cent more than the $1.55 bil­lion the com­pa­ny re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

On a year-to-date ba­sis, the group record­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed rev­enue from con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions of $1.7 bil­lion, 10 per cent high­er than the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2022.

The group’s ad­just­ed EBIT­DA on a year-to-date ba­sis for 2023 was $396 mil­lion, a two per cent de­crease com­pared to the pri­or year pe­ri­od, but a sol­id re­cov­ery from ear­li­er in the year.

TCL has full ce­ment-man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions at Clax­ton Bay in Trinidad and Ja­maica.

Its Bar­ba­dos sub­sidiary, Arawak Ce­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd sus­pend­ed its clink­er pro­duc­tion on March 15, 2023 “in the in­ter­est of its con­tin­ued vi­a­bil­i­ty.”

The core op­er­a­tions of Arawak are now fo­cused on the grind­ing of im­port­ed clink­er and ce­ment pro­duc­tion.