JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Rock Hard loses lawsuit against Trade Ministry

by

1335 days ago
20210721

St Lu­cia-based ce­ment im­porter Rock Hard Dis­tri­b­u­tion Lim­it­ed (RHDL) and its lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor have lost their law­suit against the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try over the Gov­ern­ment’s move to in­tro­duce a quo­ta and li­cens­ing regime for the im­por­ta­tion of ce­ment.

De­liv­er­ing a draft judg­ment on Mon­day, High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son dis­missed the com­pa­nies’ law­suit over the is­sue. 

The com­pa­nies filed the law­suit ear­li­er this year in re­sponse to a de­ci­sion tak­en by the min­istry in No­vem­ber last year, to cap the an­nu­al im­por­ta­tion of ce­ment at 75,000 tonnes.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so wrote to Cari­com’s Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (COT­ED) seek­ing the fur­ther sus­pen­sion of the five per cent Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff (CET) for hy­draulic ce­ment and in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to ap­ply a 50 per cent du­ty.

The quo­ta, a new im­port li­cens­ing reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem and the in­creased tax­es took ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1.

In the law­suit, the com­pa­nies were claim­ing that the Gov­ern­ment sought to im­ple­ment the mea­sures with­out prop­er con­sul­ta­tion.

At­tached to the law­suit was an af­fi­davit from Rock Hard’s ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Mark Mal­oney, who sought to ex­plain the dire im­pact on the com­pa­ny, which im­ports its hy­draulic ce­ment from Turkey.

Ac­cord­ing to Mal­oney, pri­or to Rock Hard’s en­try in­to the re­gion­al ce­ment mar­ket al­most four years ago, Mex­i­can-owned Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) had a mo­nop­oly due to the high tar­iffs on Port­land ce­ment.

“With­in the first six to 12 months of the en­try of Rock Hard Ce­ment in­to the mar­ket, the price of ce­ment dropped by about 35 to 40 per cent and that drop has been sus­tained over the past four years,” Mal­oney said.

He claimed that for the com­pa­ny to re­main vi­able, it had to im­port ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300,000 tonnes in the re­gion an­nu­al­ly, as it start­ed with a ze­ro per cent CET and al­ready ab­sorbed a five per cent in­crease.

“Even a tem­po­rary im­ple­men­ta­tion of the sec­ond de­ci­sion would like­ly de­stroy the busi­ness of both RHDL and RHTT, be­cause the ab­sence from the mar­ket of Rock Hard ce­ment even tem­porar­i­ly would ir­rev­o­ca­bly dam­age the good­will, brand recog­ni­tion and as­so­ci­a­tion of the busi­ness,” Mal­oney said.

He said that the clo­sure of the com­pa­ny would di­rect­ly lead to a sub­stan­tial in­crease in ce­ment prices. 

Short­ly af­ter fil­ing the law­suit against the min­istry, which was dealt with by Jus­tice Wil­son, Rock Hard filed a sep­a­rate law­suit be­fore the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) over the move to in­crease the du­ty on ce­ment. 

The CCJ grant­ed an or­der bar­ring the in­crease pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the law­suit be­fore it. The fi­nal de­ci­sion, in that case, is still pend­ing. 

The case is the most re­cent in a se­ries of law­suits that arose since Rock Hard en­tered the re­gion­al ce­ment mar­ket that was pre­vi­ous­ly dom­i­nat­ed by TCL and its sub­sidiaries. 

In 2001, Bar­ba­dos sought an ex­emp­tion on the tar­iff, set by COT­ED, in an ef­fort to give re­gion­al pro­duc­ers an ad­van­tage over for­eign im­ports with a 60 per cent tax. 

In 2015, TCL’s Bar­ba­dos sub­sidiary Arawak Ce­ment filed one claim when Bar­ba­dos sought to rein­tro­duce a CET of five per cent on hy­draulic ce­ment. 

In 2018, the CCJ de­liv­ered judg­ment in favour of the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment and Rock Hard, as it ruled that it was per­mit­ted to make the change. 

As part of the rul­ing, the CCJ stat­ed that a mem­ber state must give ad­e­quate no­tice of such a de­ci­sion to en­sure that re­gion­al busi­ness­es “en­joy trans­paren­cy, cer­tain­ty, and pre­dictabil­i­ty of tax struc­tures.”  

TCL brought a sep­a­rate case call­ing on the CCJ to de­cide if COT­ED had the au­thor­i­ty to clas­si­fy Rock Hard’s prod­uct in T&T.

The CCJ ruled that COT­ED had the com­pe­tence to make the de­ter­mi­na­tion.

TCL and this coun­try’s Gov­ern­ment then brought an­oth­er case chal­leng­ing COT­ED’s de­ci­sion to clas­si­fy Rock Hard’s prod­uct as hy­draulic ce­ment as op­posed to Port­land, which at­tracts a high­er tar­iff.

The CCJ even­tu­al­ly up­held COT­ED’s de­ci­sion.

Rock Hard was rep­re­sent­ed by Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Jagdeo Singh, and Justin Phelps, while Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Tama­ra Toolsie, and Brent James rep­re­sent­ed the State. 


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored