An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon yes­ter­day used part of her bud­get con­tri­bu­tion to show how food im­ports dropped be­tween 2015 and 2o23.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day in the Low­er House, Gopee-Scoon said ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) sev­er­al ma­jor food items de­clined be­tween 2015 and 2023.

“Meat and meat prepa­ra­tions in 2015, 52 mil­lion kilo­grams, in 2023 it went to 41 mil­lion kilo­grams a 21 per cent de­cline.  Fruits and veg­eta­bles in 2015 140 mil­lion kilo­grams and in 2023 130 mil­lion, a drop of sev­en per cent. In 2015, dairy prod­ucts and eggs 39 mil­lion, in 2023, 31 mil­lion, which rep­re­sents a six per cent de­cline,” she read out.

Gopee-Scoon not­ed that the de­cline in the vol­ume of im­port­ed goods, cou­pled with the con­sis­tent rise in lo­cal food man­u­fac­tur­ing is clear ev­i­dence of the shift to­wards buy­ing lo­cal­ly and pro­duc­ing food.

Giv­ing de­tails about new lo­cal prod­ucts, the min­is­ter cit­ed an ex­am­ple of ghee from the com­pa­ny Farm Fresh Dairy Prod­ucts which is cur­rent­ly sold in 95 per cent of all pu­ja stores.  

“We are go­ing to help this com­pa­ny ex­pand so that we can have a lo­cal sub­sti­tute avail­able. I en­cour­age all cit­i­zens to buy this Di­vali.  Ex­ist­ing busi­ness­es such as Arawak are now man­u­fac­tur­ing lo­cal­ly made chick­en nuggets from re­al chick­en breast meat and are sup­pli­ers to large fran­chis­es such as KFC, Pop­eye’s, and Church­es. A prime ex­am­ple of im­port sub­sti­tu­tion," Gopee-Scoon ex­plained.

How­ev­er, Sun­day Guardian’s ar­ti­cle stat­ed that T&T’s food im­port bill is now the high­est it has ever been at $7.3 bil­lion.  

In bud­get 2025, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said ef­forts to ad­dress food se­cu­ri­ty re­main a top pri­or­i­ty as the Gov­ern­ment had es­tab­lished a food se­cu­ri­ty and food prices com­mit­tee to tack­le the mul­ti­fac­eted is­sue of ris­ing food prices and en­sure ad­e­quate ac­cess to af­ford­able and nu­tri­tious food.

Gopee-Scoon rub­bished the con­tin­u­ous claims by the Op­po­si­tion that the Gov­ern­ment has done noth­ing to make ba­sic food more af­ford­able.

"Even in a pe­ri­od of de­clin­ing rev­enues, since 2015, every year the gov­ern­ment has got­ten a sus­pen­sion of the CET (com­mon ex­ter­nal tar­iff) on sev­er­al ba­sic food items, in­clud­ing canned corned beef, sar­dines and tu­na, ched­dar cheese, canned tu­na, black tea, canned sar­dines, and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, with rev­enue fore­gone of over $1.1 bil­lion, mak­ing these goods cheap­er and pro­vid­ing sav­ings to all con­sumers."

She out­lined that CET oc­curs at the lev­el of Cari­com's Coun­cil for Trade and De­vel­op­ment, which de­lib­er­ates on the tar­iffs on dif­fer­ent com­modi­ties en­ter­ing the re­gion.

On the top­ic of VAT, she clar­i­fied the Op­po­si­tion’s claim that it re­moved VAT on “7,000 food prod­ucts," when it formed the Gov­ern­ment be­tween 2010 and 2015.  

She said the 7,000 items do not re­fer to in­di­vid­ual food items, but rather su­per­mar­ket units or SKUs which in­clude vari­a­tions in flavour, pack­ag­ing, size, and brand of a lim­it­ed range of prod­ucts.

“If we take for ex­am­ple juices, they are count­ing each vari­a­tion in size of the pack­ag­ing, each flavour, and each brand sep­a­rate­ly, yet it is still one prod­uct - juice. They con­tin­ue to hood­wink the pop­u­la­tion. The VAT-ex­empt list is de­signed to sup­port the poor and the vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety. It was not meant to buffer those with greater pur­chas­ing pow­er. As a re­sult, this Gov­ern­ment sought to bring the VAT-ex­empt list back to its orig­i­nal moor­ings by re­mov­ing lux­u­ry food items such as dates, ar­ti­chokes, and maraschi­no cher­ries.” the min­is­ter de­tailed.