Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The in­creas­ing weight of op­er­a­tional costs and oth­er fac­tors has forced ma­jor com­mer­cial gyms to flex their fi­nan­cial mus­cles by in­creas­ing mem­ber­ship fees.

Gym own­ers say as the fit­ness in­dus­try evolves, time­ly steps to sus­tain the ser­vices have be­come nec­es­sary.

The peo­ple who have made New Year’s res­o­lu­tions, promis­ing them­selves “New Year, New Me” will, in some cas­es, now have to pay up to $50 ad­di­tion­al to sculpt their im­proved physique or ob­tain six-pack abs that have been elu­sive for years.

From as far back as last month to as re­cent as Tues­day pop­u­lar gyms in­clud­ing Evo­lu­tion Fit­ness, Raw Fit­ness and Health club, Health and Fit­ness gyms, Cen­tral Ath­let­ic Club, CLX Gyms and the Bar By The Beast gym have all pushed up their prices.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Bar By The Beast gym in Grand Bazaar, Kahlil Ram­sub­hag ex­plained that ab­sorb­ing op­er­a­tional costs have been weigh­ing them down.

As such, the move to ad­just mem­ber­ship fees had to be tak­en, Ram­sub­hag said dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day.

“Us­ing our stan­dard mem­ber­ship prices, right now we are at $399 and our in­crease will take us to $445. A lot of com­ments that we’re see­ing on so­cial me­dia have made it seem as though this was a de­ci­sion that was tak­en light­ly, that it was a de­ci­sion just to in­crease prof­its but that is not the case.”

Based on the state­ments is­sued, in­creas­es in op­er­a­tional costs ap­peared to be the biggest fac­tor be­hind the mem­ber­ship fee ad­just­ment, ac­cord­ing to a no­tice shared by Cen­tral Ath­let­ic Club.

The mem­ber­ship in­crease which took ef­fect on Mon­day was as a re­sult of “an es­ca­la­tion in prices in our ma­te­ri­als and over­head costs over the last few years”.

A state­ment from CLX Gym pro­vid­ing an up­date to cus­tomers in­di­cat­ed that “de­spite our on­go­ing ef­forts which in­clude ab­sorb­ing the men­tioned in­creas­es, the cur­rent cir­cum­stances in­di­cate that we can­not sus­tain our ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tional cost struc­ture.”

Ram­sub­hag said the de­ci­sion to in­crease mem­ber­ship fees were not sole­ly linked to the “gains” and that it re­flect­ed the in­vest­ments re­quired for the fit­ness in­dus­try.

He said, “Post COVID, what hap­pened is we saw an in­crease in our gen­er­al main­te­nance. Gen­er­al main­te­nance would be the clean­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty and main­te­nance of it. How­ev­er, post COVID we had to in­sti­tute a lot of more strin­gent clean­ing sys­tems and it meant that there was an in­creased cost cou­pled with it.

“We al­so had a lot of con­sum­ables that were be­ing utilised. It’s al­so the same with gym equip­ment and the main­te­nance of gym equip­ment, which in­clude com­mer­cial pieces. They aren’t the tread­mills you have in your house; this is com­mer­cial equip­ment that re­quire spe­cialised parts and ser­vices.”

But even with the tra­di­tion­al surge for those seek­ing to get their bod­ies in Car­ni­val shape, Ram­sub­hag said he ex­pect­ed to see shifts in turnout.

“We ex­pect there to be a lit­tle bit of un­cer­tain­ty in terms of the in­crease in price. We try to be as trans­par­ent as we could with our clien­tèle in terms of ex­plain­ing the rea­sons for the in­creas­es. It is not on­ly gym fa­cil­i­ties faced with this bur­den, a lot of busi­ness­es have to re­struc­ture their prices to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able.”

Busi­ness groups had pre­vi­ous­ly warned that a tough new year await­ed the pub­lic, as some say they will have no choice but to pass the elec­tric­i­ty rate in­crease on­to their cus­tomers.

While “Com­mer­cial B1 Cus­tomers” will see the per­cent­age in­crease in their bills re­duced from the pre­vi­ous range of around 51 per cent to 63 per cent to a range of 37 per cent to 51 per cent, oth­er com­mer­cial cus­tomers will see an in­crease be­tween 10 per cent to 11 per cent.

The Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) ex­plained last year that B1 cus­tomers are usu­al­ly small to mid-size en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) with a low­er con­sump­tion than larg­er busi­ness­es, how­ev­er, San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SJ­BA) pres­i­dent Ibrahim Ali said any ad­di­tion­al in­creas­es in op­er­a­tional costs will have a se­ri­ous ef­fect on busi­ness­es that are al­ready reel­ing from oth­er ex­ter­nal pres­sures.

To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TCIC) chair­man Cur­tis Williams, said there were con­cerns that land­lords will be rais­ing rent for busi­ness ten­ants.

Williams ques­tioned the tim­ing of the in­crease and if it will have the de­sired im­pact.

Some gym own­ers and op­er­a­tors al­so at­trib­uted the in­crease in mem­ber­ship fees to in­creas­es in their rental fees, and with prop­er­ty tax set to roll out there were con­cerns about its im­pact on op­er­at­ing costs.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had pre­vi­ous­ly as­sured that Prop­er­ty Tax will com­mence from Jan­u­ary 1, 2024.

“We do in­tend to col­lect prop­er­ty tax in 2024…I want peo­ple to un­der­stand that prop­er­ty tax is ap­plic­a­ble from Jan­u­ary 1, 2024.”

Last week Im­bert is­sued a state­ment clar­i­fy­ing Prop­er­ty Tax “mis­in­for­ma­tion”.

“It is to be not­ed that by law, on­ly the Board of In­land Rev­enue can no­ti­fy tax­pay­ers re­gard­ing the amount of prop­er­ty tax they are re­quired to pay, while the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for de­ter­min­ing the an­nu­al rental val­ue of prop­er­ties to al­low the BIR to cal­cu­late the prop­er­ty tax,” he said.

“The Prop­er­ty Tax payable is, in fact, on­ly 2.7 per cent of the An­nu­al Rental Val­ue stat­ed in the No­tices of Val­u­a­tion. So, if a res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty has been as­sessed at an an­nu­al rental val­ue of $60,000, the tax payable is $1,620 per year or $135 per month. If a prop­er­ty has been as­sessed at an an­nu­al rental val­ue of $18,000, the tax payable is $486 or $40.50 per month,” Min­is­ter Im­bert ex­plained. He al­so point­ed out that the prop­er­ty tax for more than 60 per cent of all prop­er­ties in T&T will be be­tween $486.00 per year ($40.50 per month) and $1,620 per year ($135 per month).