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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Ministry promises to act in public's interest in Rock Hard Cement matter

by

Guardian Media
1510 days ago
20210102
Rock Hard Cement.

Rock Hard Cement.

One day af­ter Rock Hard Ce­ment (Trinidad) Ltd is­sued a re­lease ad­vis­ing they would re­main closed for one month and cit­ed crip­pling tax mea­sures im­posed by the Gov­ern­ment as the rea­son be­hind the de­ci­sion, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try says it can­not com­ment as the mat­ter is be­fore the court.

In a brief re­lease on Sat­ur­day, the min­istry said, “It is re­gret­table that the im­porter has cho­sen to pub­lish ad­ver­tise­ments at the same time that the im­porter has filed pro­ceed­ings in the court.”

The min­istry re­as­sured the pop­u­la­tion that, “It has act­ed and shall con­tin­ue to act in the pub­lic in­ter­est and will con­tin­ue to re­view mar­ket con­di­tions to en­sure both the eco­nom­ic well-be­ing of T&T and the wel­fare of all con­sumers.”

In the re­lease by Rock Hard Ce­ment (Trinidad) Ltd on Jan­u­ary 1, of­fi­cials warned that due to mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed by the min­istry to lim­it the im­por­ta­tion of Port­land ce­ment, it would lead to an 80 per cent in­crease in ce­ment prices in the com­ing year. The com­pa­ny said this and oth­er mea­sures would de­lay the com­pa­ny’s planned re­sump­tion of busi­ness on Jan­u­ary 4.

They are hop­ing to re­open by Feb­ru­ary 1.

One of the oth­er mea­sures they claimed that was be­ing im­ple­ment­ed was the Trade Or­di­nance No 19 of 1958 which states that Port­land ce­ment, among var­i­ous oth­er sim­i­lar types of hy­draulic ce­ment are now on this coun­try’s neg­a­tive list. The oth­er two, the com­pa­ny said, were le­gal no­tices 415 and 416 of the Cus­toms Act which state all tar­iffs are sus­pend­ed and there was a 50 per cent in­crease in du­ties on Port­land ce­ment and oth­er types of hy­draulic ce­ment.

Rock Hard said these more strin­gent mea­sures fol­low a 35 per cent in­crease in du­ties im­posed in 2020.

In the re­lease, the com­pa­ny said du­ties on ce­ment had ef­fec­tive­ly moved from ze­ro to five per cent and 2021 would see a price in­crease of 80 per cent. A bag of ce­ment cur­rent­ly costs be­tween $45 and $50.

If the low­er cost is used, the price of a bag of ce­ment cur­rent­ly cost­ing $45 will in­crease to $81.

But, the com­pa­ny said a re­stric­tion on the quan­ti­ty of im­port­ed ce­ment could push the price even high­er.

They said in ad­di­tion to the new mea­sures, there was a pro­posed re­stric­tion on ce­ment com­ing in­to the coun­try as on­ly 75,000 tonnes of im­port­ed ce­ment will be al­lowed for the year, which rep­re­sent­ed a very small por­tion of T&T’s an­nu­al sup­ply.

Rock Hard warned that if this re­stric­tion is im­posed, there would be a ma­jor ce­ment short­age lead­ing to a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on prices and the added threat of a mo­nop­oly in the sup­ply of ce­ment.

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