With the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) con­tin­u­ing to ex­press con­cern about the im­pact of pro­posed high­er elec­tric­i­ty rates on its mem­bers across the coun­try, the Busi­ness Guardian has found that one large su­per­mar­ket in west Trinidad faces a 58.24 per cent in­crease in their bill.

Ac­cord­ing to the su­per­mar­ket’s Au­gust bill from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), its con­sump­tion of elec­tric­i­ty was 77,660 kilo­watt hours (kWh) and the de­mand charge was 155.6.

The su­per­mar­ket’s bill was sent to the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) and analysed by of­fi­cials there. The RIC said that even though the su­per­mar­ket was a com­mer­cial en­ter­prise, its us­age of elec­tric­i­ty, at 77,660 kWh, placed it in the cat­e­go­ry of an in­dus­tri­al cus­tomer.

The su­per­mar­ket’s Au­gust bill of $26,138.60, com­prised a con­sump­tion charge of $15,454.34, a de­mand charge of $7,780 and Val­ue-Added Tax at 12.5 per cent equalling $2,904.293.

Based on the RIC’s analy­sis, if the pro­posed elec­tric­i­ty rate hike is ap­proved by the Cab­i­net, the su­per­mar­ket in west­ern Trinidad would pay a month­ly bill of $41,362.28, if it con­sumed the same amount of elec­tric­i­ty. That would be an in­crease of $15,223.65 a month or 58.24 per cent.

In a state­ment to the Busi­ness Guardian, SATT said it ex­pects that there would be a sharp rise in su­per­mar­kets’ elec­tric­i­ty bill, which would im­pact op­er­at­ing costs and even­tu­al­ly prices.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by SATT, a typ­i­cal su­per­mar­ket re­tail es­tab­lish­ment present­ly has a bi-month­ly billing cy­cle of TT$30,000.

A su­per­mar­ket own­er, who asked not to be named, told the Busi­ness Guardian that on av­er­age, small­er sized su­per­mar­kets spend five per cent of their rev­enues on their elec­tric­i­ty bill.

SATT al­so said that giv­en that the arrange­ments are still be­ing worked out for com­mer­cial cus­tomers, it is dif­fi­cult to es­ti­mate where the month­ly billing will fall, but it will prob­a­bly be in the range of TT$20,000 to TT$25,000 per month.

“Some ma­jor points to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion: if the new rate is ac­cept­ed, then price pres­sures will be ex­pe­ri­enced; there is al­so the po­ten­tial for a high­er in­ci­dence of pil­fer­age as this is al­ready high and the pop­u­la­tion is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing price pres­sures from the cost of liv­ing,” SATT said in its state­ment.

SATT even fore­sees a neg­a­tive so­cial im­pli­ca­tions.

“It may al­so af­fect im­ports of cold foods on a whole. As it may be too ex­pen­sive to sell and will al­so be sub­ject­ed to theft due to its in­creased price. This would fur­ther slow down sales of these spe­cif­ic items un­til we are un­able to bring them in at a rea­son­able cost, which will slow down im­ports.

“Places that use heavy elec­tric­i­ty—large man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions, meat fa­cil­i­ties, ice cream, veg­etable stor­ages—all will be af­fect­ed. Larg­er es­tab­lish­ments that re­quire air con­di­tion­ing for op­er­a­tions due to high heat and al­so elec­tric­i­ty for large cold stor­ages, even shelf cold stor­age will def­i­nite­ly be sub­ject­ed to in­creas­es.”

SATT al­so spoke about how su­per­mar­kets can be ex­pect­ed to ad­just to a high­er elec­tric­i­ty bill as they seek to con­serve elec­tric­i­ty.

“Gro­ceries that use air con­di­tion­ing—can be ad­just­ed by us­ing less air con­di­tion­ing but the im­pact will be an un­pleas­ant heat­box shop­ping ex­pe­ri­ences. Al­so places like malls that use elec­tric­i­ty to keep places cool will al­so be sub­ject­ed to in­creas­es. It can come from mall rent in­creas­es to cater for the dif­fer­ences in high costs of elec­tric­i­ty op­er­a­tions. In ad­di­tion, even though LED light­ing is low­er volt­age there is more of it be­ing used, more se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras and equip­ment in­stalled and in use, high­er tem­per­a­tures means the de­mand on air con­di­tion­ing.”