Af­ter Nu­trim­ix an­nounced that it would be drop­ping the price of its flour prod­ucts on Ju­ly 3, con­sumers around the coun­try were hope­ful that more busi­ness­es would fol­low suit.

That was par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter an­oth­er flour sup­pli­er, Sheik Lisha Ltd in Cunu­pia, an­nounced all its flour prod­ucts would be ten per cent cheap­er, with its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Churchill Azad Akaloo at­tribut­ing this re­duc­tion main­ly to a de­cline in freight rates.

In an­nounc­ing its flour price de­cline, Akaloo said, “Where a con­tain­er was cost­ing be­tween US$13,000 and US$14,000 be­fore, that same con­tain­er is now be­tween US$3,000 and US$4,000, so we can af­ford to go down.”

How­ev­er, in the past week, sev­er­al busi­ness­es, no­tably bak­eries, have stat­ed that they would not be drop­ping their prices as the costs of sev­er­al oth­er prod­ucts and raw ma­te­ri­als have not come down, de­spite the de­cline in ship­ping rates.

Re­cent­ly ap­point­ed pres­i­dent of the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion, Son­ja Voisin, con­firmed on Fri­day that freight rates had in­deed gone down sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

“Con­tain­er rates last year and dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic out of Asia, could have run you be­tween US$15,000 and US$20,000 per 40-foot con­tain­er. From the US to Trinidad, it could have run you—but it did not in­crease as much as Asia—from US$6,000 to US$8,000,” she said, adding, “The price of a con­tain­er now from Chi­na is US$2,800 per-40-foot con­tain­er and US$2,800 to US$3,000 de­pend­ing on the port in Asia.”

She al­so not­ed that the price of con­tain­er from the US was on av­er­age US$3,500 for a 20-foot con­tain­er while 40-foot con­tain­ers could cost be­tween US$4,000 to US$5,000.

“But you al­so have to look at the length of time that it takes to get from Chi­na. You’re look­ing at six weeks min­i­mum ver­sus sev­en days from the US. And there is some val­ue there,” as she ex­plained the sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er rates for ship­ping from Asia as op­posed to the US.

But she ex­plained that the freight rates were not the on­ly vari­able nec­es­sary for con­sumer prod­ucts to come down, and in­deed in the case of flour, the cost of grain fig­ured sig­nif­i­cant­ly in lo­cal brands opt­ing to ad­just their prices.

“What af­fects the price of grain is de­mand and sup­ply. For ex­am­ple, with the war in Ukraine you would find that there is a de­mand is­sue be­cause Ukraine was a big sup­pli­er of grain and now that they can’t, you would find there is a short­age or they have oth­er ar­eas they have to source from. Now that has al­le­vi­at­ed to a point and the price of grain would have dropped a bit,” she said

She al­so stressed that the time im­porters have to wait on prod­ucts would af­fect the prices con­sumers pay.

“Not hav­ing your goods on the shelf, yes there is a cost fac­tor for that. So that’s why you would find that now af­ter COVID, you have a lot of com­pa­nies look­ing at nearshoring. So they are look­ing at dif­fer­ent sup­pli­ers with­in clos­er reach. A good ex­am­ple of that is peo­ple go­ing to Mex­i­co now to buy stuff or to Brazil,” Voisin said.

She point­ed out freight costs were still be­ing in­flat­ed by ex­tend­ed de­lays at the port caused by Cus­toms and Ex­cise.

“The prob­lem that we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing now in Trinidad is the de­lays that we find in clear­ing con­tain­ers. At this point, the Cus­toms and Ex­cise di­vi­sion is tak­ing a very long time to clear con­tain­ers. For ex­am­ple, you can get an ap­point­ment if you have an ap­point­ment sys­tem. And you can take up to two to three weeks to be giv­en an ap­point­ment for an ex­am­i­na­tion. So your con­tain­er is al­ready in rent and de­mur­rage and the rent and de­mur­rage will con­tribute to fur­ther added ex­pense to your goods. So even if your freight rates have de­creased from Chi­na, the cost that you’re in­cur­ring be­cause of the con­ges­tion,” said Voisin.

This is­sue has be­come well known not on­ly to busi­ness­es im­port­ing stock but on­line shop­pers who have re­ceived nu­mer­ous no­ti­fi­ca­tions from var­i­ous web couri­ers not­ing de­lays im­posed on their prod­ucts by cus­tomers as well as in­creased charges on items as a re­sult.

Last week Trop­i­cal Ex­press alert­ed its cus­tomers via email stat­ing, “We have not­ed that some man­i­fests are tak­ing longer than usu­al to move from ‘In-Tran­sit/Cus­toms’ to ‘Pro­cess­ing’. Please note that ON­LY when pack­ages are cleared it will move from ‘In-Tran­sit/Cus­toms’ to ‘Pro­cess­ing’. Al­though Trop­i­cal Ex­press is re­ceiv­ing, pro­cess­ing and ship­ping your pack­ages as fast as pos­si­ble in Mi­a­mi, man­i­fests that ar­rive in Trinidad must be grant­ed an ap­point­ment from Cus­toms & Ex­cise first, in or­der for us to clear. On a dai­ly ba­sis, Trop­i­cal Ex­press sub­mits a list of man­i­fest that are avail­able for clear­ance in Trinidad to Cus­toms. How­ev­er, we are guid­ed by the dai­ly Cus­toms ap­point­ment list and how much man­i­fest/s is ap­proved to be cleared.”

Caribbean Air­lines Jet­Pak sent a sim­i­lar no­tice to cus­tomers last month which read, “The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion has re­cent­ly start­ed con­duct­ing 100 per cent screen­ing of pack­ages. This change has re­sult­ed in longer clear­ance times, which have led to de­lays in the de­liv­ery of your pack­ages. We un­der­stand that this may cause in­con­ve­nience and frus­tra­tion. A sig­nif­i­cant as­pect of the screen­ing process en­tails ver­i­fy­ing the cost of the items be­ing shipped.

“Specif­i­cal­ly, the in­voic­es that you pro­vide play a cru­cial role in de­ter­min­ing the ap­plic­a­ble charges. In sit­u­a­tions where no in­voic­es are sup­plied, cus­toms charges are ap­plied based on the val­u­a­tion of the Cus­toms Of­fi­cer. Nat­u­ral­ly, this ad­di­tion­al step con­tributes to fur­ther de­lays.”

Aero­post had al­so is­sued a sim­i­lar no­tice to cus­tomers not­ing these de­lays.

Voisin ex­plained that these de­lays did not on­ly cost time but in the case of busi­ness­es, sig­nif­i­cant ex­pense in freight costs.

“The is­sues that are ex­pe­ri­enced with clear­ing con­tain­ers from Cus­toms and Ex­cise, the lack of ease of do­ing busi­ness and the 100 per cent ex­am­i­na­tion that they are im­ple­ment­ing in the coun­try adds sig­nif­i­cant cost in terms of rent and de­mur­rage. The av­er­age could be US$100 a day for a con­tain­er and when you have a wait time of say ten days or five days and then you are not get­ting an ap­point­ment for two weeks, add that US$100 per day on­to that. And you have some­times peo­ple are pay­ing US$2,000 to US$3,000 in de­mur­rage charges wait­ing for an ap­point­ment to have their goods ex­am­ined,” Voisin ex­plained.

“So yes, freight rates have gone down. But some cus­tomers may not re­alise the ben­e­fits of it be­cause of the costs that they in­cur when the goods reach in­to Trinidad, whether in rent and de­mur­rage and I can’t say it is 100 per cent (of the prob­lem) but it is a prob­lem,” she said, adding that the fact that web couri­er ser­vices have high­light­ed the is­sue has un­der­lined how prob­lem­at­ic the sit­u­a­tion has be­come.

“Cus­toms are giv­ing very few ap­point­ments and they’re do­ing 100 per cent in­spec­tion. And the ap­point­ments are you might get one ap­point­ment a week. Where­as you would have your goods land here and you’re sup­posed to get it the next day. It takes a week to two weeks be­fore you get a couri­er ship­ment and then some­times three weeks be­fore you get an ap­point­ment. So a lot of peo­ple are com­plain­ing on the couri­er side which is sup­posed to be fast-mov­ing,” said Voisin.

In her in­au­gur­al state­ment to the me­dia fol­low­ing her re­turn to the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­den­cy in March, Voisin high­light­ed these is­sues and called for “leg­isla­tive re­form, and en­gage­ment of suit­able per­son­nel in crit­i­cal ar­eas is nec­es­sary for a holis­tic so­lu­tion.”

She stat­ed then the ship­ping in­dus­try had been an­tic­i­pat­ing the Au­gust 1 in­tro­duc­tion of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), which is ex­pect­ed to bring short to medi­um-term ben­e­fits.