GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

chair­man of the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC), Dr Ronald Ramkissoon, agree­ing that an­oth­er ce­ment sup­pli­er is need­ed in T&T as he ad­vo­cat­ed that com­pe­ti­tion is the best way to grow an econ­o­my.

T&T’s lone ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­er an­nounced a 7 per cent in­crease from Feb­ru­ary 17, 2025 on bagged prod­ucts—such as Pre­mi­um Plus, Eco Ce­ment and Plas­ta Mas­ta while the in­crease in bulk ce­ment took ef­fect from March 5.

Ramkissoon who spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian about this lat­est price in­crease at a me­dia work­shop host­ed by the FTC on Tues­day said, “We are very con­cerned about the im­pact of ce­ment on the con­struc­tion sec­tor be­cause we un­der­stand that con­struc­tion con­tributes sub­stan­tial­ly to eco­nom­ic growth. Trinidad and To­ba­go is in­ter­est­ed in a faster grow­ing econ­o­my and there­fore, any­thing that can ham­per that growth for ex­am­ple, if it is ce­ment prices, we will not ad­vo­cate for that. In­deed, we want to make sure that con­sumers, oth­er busi­ness­es and the Gov­ern­ment it­self ben­e­fit from a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket through greater choic­es and through bet­ter prices.”

He said the FTC con­tin­ues to do its work in re­spect of these price in­creas­es tak­ing in­to ac­count the rea­sons from TCL.

“We lis­tened to the pro­duc­er in terms of their jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. We lis­tened to them in re­spect of their con­tri­bu­tion to em­ploy­ment, to for­eign ex­change earn­ings and to their pay­ment of tax­es.

“We lis­tened to that but at the same time we are aware that one pro­duc­er is very of­ten not the best way to go. So we looked at what has been hap­pen­ing in re­spect of im­ports and we see what the min­istry (Min­istry of Trade) it­self has been say­ing in re­spect of low­er­ing the CET (com­mon ex­ter­nal tar­iff) in re­spect of in­creas­ing pos­si­ble sup­pli­ers on the mar­ket and we think that is the way to go for any mar­ket in which you have a mo­nop­o­lis­tic sit­u­a­tion. So our dis­cus­sions, our re­search is along those lines be­cause we be­lieve the more com­pe­ti­tion we have, the bet­ter choic­es con­sumers would have,” Ramkissoon em­pha­sised.

At the same time, the for­mer man­ag­er of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd’s Eco­nom­ic In­tel­li­gence Unit said while the FTC not­ed the ce­ment price in­creas­es, it al­so took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that prices of raw ma­te­ri­als have been ris­ing since COVID and al­so as a con­se­quence of the Rus­sia-Ukraine war.

“In many cas­es prices have not come down. The rate of in­crease have in fact been low­er as we see in Trinidad and To­ba­go but prices re­main high and every so of­ten there is a new event glob­al­ly that re­sults in an in­crease in prices. So that sup­ply chain then is un­der con­tin­u­ous stress. We are aware of that,” the se­nior econ­o­mist said.

At the same time, be­ing aware of that does not equate to com­pla­cen­cy on the part of the FTC.

“We still con­sid­er a sit­u­a­tion where you have a mo­nop­o­lis­tic pro­duc­er as one that is un­de­sir­able or one that has to be mon­i­tored close­ly and we ask for ex­pla­na­tions but we do not on­ly de­pend on that,” Ramkissoon said.

In this re­gard, he ex­plained the FTC looked at the price of ce­ment in the rest of the Caribbean and even in the rest of the world, how dif­fi­cult it is for com­pa­nies to im­port ce­ment and ad­vise ac­cord­ing­ly in a way that the con­struc­tion sec­tor and the econ­o­my can grow.

TCL in­creased the price of ce­ment for a fifth time since De­cem­ber 2021.

On whether Gov­ern­ment took too long to in­ter­vene, Ramkissoon said, “I think the Gov­ern­ment has in­ter­vened for many years now in re­spect of ce­ment. There is that bal­ance, which I dis­cern the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to strike be­tween a com­pa­ny that of its very na­ture has to be large giv­en the na­ture of what it does and the fact that it con­tributes to em­ploy­ment, to for­eign ex­change earn­ings and so on.

“At the same tim,e I think the Gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed it is very much aware that high­er prices which are un­jus­ti­fied can­not be in the best in­ter­est of the con­sumer and there­fore, there has al­ways been this arrange­ment un­der the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff where the Gov­ern­ment would go and ask for a re­duc­tion in the CET. We have al­so seen move­ment in the quo­tas. Now we ex­pect that bal­ance in try­ing to keep a com­pa­ny afloat and try­ing to en­sure that com­pa­ny con­tributes to the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go against prices and against the con­sumer. I think that bal­ance is very im­por­tant.”

He fur­ther not­ed the FTC con­tin­ues to get “be­hind the num­bers” as it asks com­pa­nies for de­tails to “jus­ti­fy what they are say­ing” when an in­crease oc­curs.

“We bring to bear oth­er de­vel­op­ments in the econ­o­my, oth­er de­vel­op­ments in the world on the prices that we are see­ing and where nec­es­sary we ad­vise ac­cord­ing­ly.

“I would al­so say we are em­pow­ered un­der the act (Fair Trad­ing Act) to take com­pa­nies to the court if we be­lieve they are be­ing an­ti-com­pet­i­tive as de­fined in the law,” Ramkissoon added.

Em­pha­sis­ing that the FTC is all about want­i­ng the econ­o­my to grow, Ramkissoon added it al­so wants so-called large com­pa­nies to al­so con­tribute to the econ­o­my, em­ploy peo­ple and to in­vest, adding that out of in­vest­ments com­pa­nies pay tax­es among oth­er eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits in­clud­ing the earn­ing of forex.

How­ev­er, at the same time Ramkissoon main­tained that large, medi­um-sized or small com­pa­nies “can­not be al­lowed to take ad­van­tage of oth­er busi­ness­es or of the con­sumer.”

Pressed on whether TCL was be­ing un­fair to the con­sumer or should be tak­en to task by the FTC based on its con­sec­u­tive price in­creas­es over the years, Ramkissoon said the FTC asked TCL “di­rect­ly for an­swers” but stat­ed that the FTC “has not ar­rived at a con­clu­sive po­si­tion as yet.”

“How­ev­er, at the end of the day, we think com­pe­ti­tion, ad­di­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion in the mar­ket is the best way to go,” he added.

Broad­er re­search on ce­ment in­dus­try need­ed

Re­search on the con­struc­tion sec­tor in T&T ought not to be lim­it­ed in terms of the con­sumer, busi­ness­es, or of TCL it­self, but this must al­so be ap­plied to po­ten­tial sup­pli­ers and why they are not im­port­ing, the FTC’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Be­van Nar­i­nesingh sug­gest­ed.

“Some of the re­search that could be done in­clude whether it is be­cause of the high costs of im­port­ing ce­ment or pos­si­bly the abil­i­ty to ac­cess re­sources to pay for the ce­ment. One thing you have to look at is oth­er mar­kets in the re­gion and to see if there are con­cerns re­gard­ing com­pe­ti­tion and if there are al­ter­na­tives in these oth­er coun­tries in terms of sup­pli­ers,” said Nar­i­nesingh who al­so spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian at the event.

He al­so echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments that the FTC is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing a fair and com­pet­i­tive mar­ket through­out the econ­o­my, in­clud­ing the ce­ment in­dus­try.

He ex­plained this is be­ing done through en­force­ment of the Fair Trad­ing Act, which al­so means re­search is done as well as in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the prac­tices in the in­dus­try, in­clud­ing if nec­es­sary, re­ceiv­ing com­plaints about pos­si­ble an­ti-com­pet­i­tive con­duct.

TCL price hikes

Be­fore the 2025 price in­crease, TCL in­creased prices on Feb­ru­ary 19, 2024. Then, TCL said the hike was due to the con­tin­u­ous in­fla­tion that af­fects the in­dus­try and oth­er eco­nom­ic sec­tors, mak­ing it nec­es­sary to ad­just the price of ce­ment by then $3 per sack. That took the price of the 42.5 kilo­gram sack of Pre­mi­um Plus ce­ment to $57.38 VAT-in­clu­sive, while Eco ce­ment in 42.5 kilo­gram sacks rose to $52.88 VAT-in­clu­sive.

​TCL had al­so in­creased prices on March 20, 2023, by eight per cent for Pre­mi­um Plus and five per cent for Eco ce­ment.

At that time, the com­pa­ny said, “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 Au­gust 2022, prices went up by $3.54 for Pre­mi­um Plus, which went to $47.83 and by $2.08 for Eco ce­ment, in­creas­ing it to $43.65.

In De­cem­ber 2021, TCL raised the price of a 42.5 Kg sack of Pre­mi­um Plus by 15 per cent to $46.56 VAT-in­clu­sive and Eco ce­ment by 8% to $43.71 VAT-in­clu­sive.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon had said the Gov­ern­ment did not sup­port TCL’s lat­est pro­posed price hike as she called for more sup­pli­ers in the mar­ket.

Speak­ing dur­ing a tour of Cream­ery Nov­el­ties at the Di­a­mond Vale In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in Diego Mar­tin on Feb­ru­ary 18, this year the min­is­ter had said, “The Gov­ern­ment will not coun­te­nance the con­tin­ued in­creas­es by TCL in the mar­ket­place.”