GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

The Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC)-a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd (NGC), which holds a vir­tu­al mo­nop­oly over tug­boat ser­vices at key ports in­clud­ing Point Lisas, has is­sued a board man­date re­quir­ing lo­cal ship­ping agents to pay for towage ser­vices ex­clu­sive­ly in US dol­lars.

This pol­i­cy over­turns a long-stand­ing prac­tice of fa­cil­i­tat­ing pay­ments in TT dol­lars.

While aimed at bol­ster­ing NEC’s for­eign ex­change (forex) re­serves, some ship­ping agents be­lieve this uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sion im­pos­es se­vere op­er­a­tional and cash flow bur­dens on lo­cal agents, threat­ens to in­crease trade fric­tion by forc­ing im­porters to pay in US cur­ren­cy, and es­tab­lish­es a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for oth­er state-con­trolled port ser­vice providers.

This change, com­mu­ni­cat­ed for­mal­ly by NEC’s act­ing pres­i­dent Mar­cia May­nard in a memo, marks a sig­nif­i­cant shift in how lo­cal ship­ping agents and im­port-ex­port busi­ness­es must now man­age their op­er­a­tions and cash flow.

The memo dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025 ad­dressed to all towage and har­bour users re­gard­ing pay­ment of tar­iffs for towage ser­vices stat­ed, “Please be ad­vised that ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 1, 2025, the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Na­tion­al En­er­gy) will be ac­cept­ing pay­ment of the ser­vice tar­iff in Unit­ed States cur­ren­cy ON­LY.

“As you are aware, the tar­iffs are quot­ed in Unit­ed States dol­lars (USD), in­clu­sive of the sum for the ad­vanced de­posit. How­ev­er, in the past, agents have con­vert­ed the said fig­ures to Trinidad and To­ba­go dol­lars (TTD) and made the pay­ments in TTD.”

The memo added the new board of di­rec­tors of Na­tion­al En­er­gy “has giv­en strict in­struc­tions that we are to ac­cept pay­ment in USD on­ly. As such, go­ing for­ward, Na­tion­al En­er­gy will be sub­mit­ting tar­iff quo­ta­tions and ac­cept­ing pay­ment in USD on­ly.”

Na­tion­al En­er­gy al­so urged all users to re­lay this po­si­tion to their agents and ad­vise that pay­ment of tar­iffs will no longer be ac­cept­ed in TT dol­lars.

Ship­ping agents who spoke to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian said for more than ten years, the Na­tion­al En­er­gy had al­lowed cus­tomers the flex­i­bil­i­ty to set­tle towage tar­iffs in ei­ther US or TT dol­lars—a prac­tice that helped ease the bur­den of sourc­ing scarce for­eign cur­ren­cy and sup­port­ed smoother trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion.

Now, with the new US$-on­ly pol­i­cy in ef­fect, agents who pre­vi­ous­ly op­er­at­ed un­der TT-dol­lar arrange­ments must se­cure US cur­ren­cy in ad­vance to meet their oblig­a­tions.

This has raised alarm among stake­hold­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those whose prin­ci­pals or ship­ping lines do not pre-fund lo­cal op­er­a­tions in for­eign cur­ren­cy. In many cas­es, agents re­ly on TT-dol­lar freight col­lect charges to set­tle lo­cal in­voic­es, and the sud­den re­quire­ment to con­vert or source US$ adds a new lay­er of fi­nan­cial and lo­gis­ti­cal com­plex­i­ty.

These con­cerns were raised on Tues­day when the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion met with mem­bers of the NEC.

Ship­ping agents ar­gued that a one-size-fits-all ap­proach fails to ac­count for the di­verse fi­nan­cial struc­tures and client arrange­ments with­in the in­dus­try.

“Some agents will have chal­lenges be­cause of dif­fer­ent arrange­ments with their ship­ping lines or their prin­ci­pals. It could be that not all the time they are pre-fund­ed. It could be that one of the main cas­es was some of the con­tain­er lines al­low cus­tomers to pay freight charges in TT dol­lars and they use those freight to col­lect charges to now set­tle lo­cal in­voic­es.

So there’s re­al­ly not a whole lot of US trans­fer­ring through­out and it fa­cil­i­tates trade, fa­cil­i­tates im­porters to pay in TT. Now if that is now not al­lowed and they have to now pay in US, they’re go­ing to have to be pre-fund­ed. They have to go and get the prin­ci­pal to pre-fund them and so forth,” one ship­ping agent ex­plained.

In­stead, agents are ad­vo­cat­ing for a more flex­i­ble frame­work—one that al­lows agents who are net earn­ers of US$ to con­tin­ue pay­ing in that cur­ren­cy, while per­mit­ting oth­ers to main­tain TT-dol­lar pay­ments where nec­es­sary.

This ap­peal is not mere­ly ad­min­is­tra­tive; it is root­ed in the prac­ti­cal re­al­i­ties of trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion.

Ship­ping lines that cur­rent­ly ac­cept TT-dol­lar pay­ments from cus­tomers do so with the un­der­stand­ing that lo­cal ex­pens­es—such as towage ser­vices—could al­so be paid in TT cur­ren­cy.

If these ex­pens­es must now be set­tled in US$, those lines may be forced to re­vise their billing prac­tices, pass­ing the forex bur­den on­to im­porters and ex­porters.

This could lead to in­creased costs, de­layed ship­ments, and re­duced com­pet­i­tive­ness for lo­cal busi­ness­es.

“It seems that with the new board, there are new rules,” one agent said.

The con­cern ex­tends be­yond Na­tion­al En­er­gy.

In­dus­try play­ers fear that if this pol­i­cy sets a prece­dent, oth­er state-owned en­ti­ties—such as the Port Au­thor­i­ty—may fol­low suit, de­mand­ing US dol­lar pay­ments for port ser­vices that are cur­rent­ly billed in TT dol­lars.

Such a shift would fur­ther strain the al­ready lim­it­ed sup­ply of for­eign cur­ren­cy in the mar­ket and could dis­cour­age ship­ping lines from ac­com­mo­dat­ing TT-dol­lar trans­ac­tions al­to­geth­er.

Ship­ping agents fur­ther stat­ed that at the heart of the is­sue is a broad­er eco­nom­ic prin­ci­ple: the TT dol­lar is the le­gal ten­der of T&T.

They be­lieve that busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing with­in the coun­try should re­tain the op­tion to trans­act in the na­tion­al cur­ren­cy, es­pe­cial­ly in light of per­sis­tent forex short­ages.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy, as a forex earn­er, has his­tor­i­cal­ly bal­anced its rev­enue streams be­tween TT and US cur­ren­cy as ship­ping agents ques­tion the ra­tio­nale be­hind dis­rupt­ing this bal­ance now, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the ex­ist­ing sys­tem has func­tioned ef­fec­tive­ly for years.

They shared at the close of Tues­day’s meet­ing dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing with hopes of a favourable out­come for all.

As­so­ci­a­tion con­cerned

Two weeks ago, The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to the as­so­ci­a­tion for com­ment on the mat­ter.

In re­sponse, the as­so­ci­a­tion ac­knowl­edged that it had re­ceived ex­pres­sions of con­cern from some mem­bers who are users of Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s towage ser­vices, re­gard­ing the im­pli­ca­tions of the no­tice on its op­er­a­tions.

It em­pha­sised that its pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive is to fa­cil­i­tate a res­o­lu­tion that is ac­cept­able to all par­ties, not­ing, “Na­tion­al En­er­gy is al­so a mem­ber of our as­so­ci­a­tion.”

When asked for an up­date, the as­so­ci­a­tion on­ly stat­ed, “There is noth­ing fur­ther to add be­yond the state­ment is­sued on Oc­to­ber 8. We re­main en­gaged in on­go­ing di­a­logue with all stake­hold­ers.”

En­er­gy Min­is­ter will­ing to meet

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo who said he he has not re­ceived “any re­quest from any en­ti­ty rep­re­sent­ing tug boat op­er­a­tors for a meet­ing or in­ter­ven­tion.”

He added per­haps they have en­gaged the line min­is­ter, who is the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and un­der whom Na­tion­al En­er­gy falls.

When con­tact­ed, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said he is will­ing to meet with con­cerned par­ties.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that he has not re­ceived any of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence from any­one to date.