GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

Every trip to the gro­cery can serve as a re­minder of how vul­ner­a­ble T&T re­mains to glob­al sup­ply chain shocks.

As ship­ping dis­rup­tions per­sist, freight rates rise and geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions cre­ate un­cer­tain­ty, food se­cu­ri­ty is emerg­ing as a press­ing con­cern for house­holds al­ready grap­pling with high­er liv­ing costs.

Dr Patrick An­toine, CEO and tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO), in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Prof Andy Knight and de­vel­op­ment econ­o­mist Mar­lene Attzs are all warn­ing that the coun­try faces grow­ing risks from ex­ter­nal shocks that are dri­ving up the cost of food and threat­en­ing the pur­chas­ing pow­er of or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

Their con­cerns al­so come against the back­drop of re­stric­tions at the Pana­ma Canal, dis­rup­tions to glob­al ship­ping routes and con­tin­ued in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures af­fect­ing in­ter­na­tion­al food mar­kets.

“The Pana­ma Canal Au­thor­i­ty’s Ad­vi­so­ry A-29-2026 caps dai­ly tran­sits at 34 ves­sels from Sep­tem­ber 4, 2026, falling to 32 from 15 Sep­tem­ber, with Neopana­max draft re­stric­tions tight­en­ing to 47.5 feet by 1 Oc­to­ber. Rain­fall in the Canal wa­ter­shed ran 34 per cent be­low the his­tor­i­cal av­er­age from May through Au­gust 2026, with in­flows 44 per cent be­low,” An­toine said.

He added the on­go­ing cri­sis at the canal could have sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for T&T be­cause of the coun­try’s heavy re­liance on im­port­ed goods and its cen­tral role in re­gion­al trade and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works.

“The re­stric­tions now af­fect­ing the Pana­ma Canal Au­thor­i­ty could have sig­nif­i­cant con­se­quences for Trinidad and To­ba­go, dri­ving up food prices, in­creas­ing costs for man­u­fac­tur­ers and im­porters, and plac­ing ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on house­holds al­ready deal­ing with af­ford­abil­i­ty chal­lenges,” An­toine warned.

Ac­cord­ing to the CP­SO’s De­risk­ing CSME im­ports analy­sis, these re­gion­al ports are cen­tral to stream­lin­ing cost-ef­fec­tive al­ter­na­tive sourc­ing across the com­mu­ni­ty.

“What hap­pens at the hub there­fore, does not stay at the hub. And the hub’s role is matched by an an­chor-sup­pli­er role: In 2024, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s do­mes­tic ex­ports to the CSME to­talled US$784.7 mil­lion, 11.2 per cent of to­tal do­mes­tic ex­ports and its sec­ond-largest ex­port mar­ket af­ter the Unit­ed States, with a fur­ther US$501.3 mil­lion in re-ex­ports mov­ing through its lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor, to­geth­er con­tribut­ing US$1.1 bil­lion in for­eign ex­change earn­ings. Among all bi­lat­er­al part­ners, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s largest mer­chan­dise trade sur­plus is with the CSME,” An­toine out­lined.

For T&T, the im­pact is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant be­cause Port-of-Spain serves as one of the CSME’s two main con­sol­i­da­tion hubs, along­side Kingston, Ja­maica.

Goods des­tined for sev­er­al re­gion­al mar­kets of­ten pass through Trinidad be­fore be­ing dis­trib­uted across Cari­com.

“Be­cause T&T is a hub, its cost shock cas­cades out­ward. Every Cari­com state ex­cept Ja­maica al­ready pays above the world av­er­age of rough­ly US$0.07 per kilo­gramme in freight, ris­ing to about US$0.22 per kilo­gram for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, some three times the world lev­el. The canal episode rais­es these spoke costs from an al­ready el­e­vat­ed base,” An­toine added.

Freight costs be­gin mov­ing through sup­ply chains

Ac­cord­ing to An­toine, ship­ping line CMA CGM has im­posed a low-wa­ter sur­charge of US$150 per con­tain­er on car­go des­tined for T&T.

Ad­di­tion­al peak-sea­son sur­charges rang­ing from US$250 to US$275 per con­tain­er are ex­pect­ed to take ef­fect in Oc­to­ber, in­creas­ing costs by rough­ly US$400 to US$425 per con­tain­er be­fore any in­crease in un­der­ly­ing freight rates.

He warned that these in­creas­es are oc­cur­ring just as im­porters be­gin build­ing in­ven­to­ry for the fi­nal quar­ter of the year, tra­di­tion­al­ly the busiest pe­ri­od for re­tail spend­ing and con­sumer de­mand, not­ing that busi­ness­es fac­ing high­er trans­porta­tion costs are like­ly to pass those in­creas­es along to con­sumers through high­er shelf prices. ​

An­toine said the sit­u­a­tion demon­strates how events oc­cur­ring thou­sands of miles away can quick­ly af­fect lo­cal prices.

While the canal may ap­pear ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly dis­tant, he not­ed that many of the goods con­sumed by house­holds and used by busi­ness­es in T&T de­pend on ship­ping routes con­nect­ed to the glob­al mar­itime net­work that pass through Pana­ma.

“Rough­ly 17 per cent of Cari­com im­ports are food, so the house­hold bas­ket is acute­ly ex­posed to lo­gis­tics-cost in­creas­es: el­e­vat­ed freight and port charges pass straight in­to land­ed costs and on­to the shelf. The sur­charges above are levied per con­tain­er, not per dol­lar of car­go, so they weigh heav­i­est on the low-val­ue, high-vol­ume sta­ples that fill a food con­tain­er, which is pre­cise­ly where low­er-in­come house­holds spend most. The de­lay chan­nel adds its own mar­gin, as dou­bled tran­sit times force high­er safe­ty stocks, work­ing cap­i­tal car­ry and stock-out pre­mia, each re­cov­ered in price,” An­toine added.

He not­ed that man­u­fac­tur­ing feels the same shock from the in­put side as T&T’s CSME ex­ports are con­cen­trat­ed in food and bev­er­ages, pa­per prod­ucts, plas­tics and light man­u­fac­tur­ing: ce­re­als, car­bon­at­ed bev­er­ages, bis­cuits, and choco­late.

“Telling­ly, the glass and plas­tic bot­tles in which the re­gion’s prod­ucts are packed are them­selves among its top fif­teen re­gion­al ex­ports. Asia-ori­gin in­gre­di­ents, resins, pack­ag­ing ma­te­ri­als and ma­chin­ery en­ter these pro­duc­tion costs and nar­row mar­gins be­fore a sin­gle price is re­set,” An­toine said

Food in­fla­tion hit­ting fam­i­lies hard­est

For Knight, the cen­tral con­cern is the im­pact that ris­ing food prices are hav­ing on house­holds.

“Food prices are ris­ing faster than in­comes,” he said.

He ar­gued that al­though head­line in­fla­tion fig­ures may ap­pear rel­a­tive­ly mod­er­ate, food in­fla­tion is what con­sumers ex­pe­ri­ence most di­rect­ly when they vis­it su­per­mar­kets.

“Food in­fla­tion is what house­holds feel. For low- and mid­dle-in­come house­holds, food is 30 to 40 per cent of spend­ing. So even a small rise in food costs means trade-offs for the or­di­nary per­son liv­ing in T&T,” he said.

Knight not­ed that T&T im­ports more than 80 per cent of the food con­sumed lo­cal­ly, leav­ing con­sumers par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­posed to in­creas­es in freight costs, ex­change-rate pres­sures and glob­al sup­ply dis­rup­tions.

“When the TT dol­lar is un­der pres­sure and freight costs rise, that hits the gro­cery shelf di­rect­ly,” he said.

He fur­ther warned that geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, in­clud­ing dis­rup­tions af­fect­ing ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping cor­ri­dors, could cre­ate ad­di­tion­al up­ward pres­sure on prices by rais­ing trans­porta­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion costs through­out the glob­al econ­o­my.

Af­ford­abil­i­ty be­com­ing the re­al cri­sis

While much at­ten­tion is of­ten giv­en to in­di­vid­ual price hikes, Attzs be­lieves the broad­er is­sue is af­ford­abil­i­ty as she ar­gued that pol­i­cy­mak­ers should fo­cus on house­hold pur­chas­ing pow­er and the cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect of ris­ing prices across nu­mer­ous goods.

“The more im­por­tant ques­tion is not what an in­crease in the price of a Kiss cake or a KFC meal, in iso­la­tion, tells us the state of the econ­o­my,” Attzs said adding, “Rather, we should be ask­ing what is hap­pen­ing to the over­all af­ford­abil­i­ty of food, whether house­hold in­comes are keep­ing pace with the cost of liv­ing, and how re­peat­ed in­creas­es across a range of every­day goods are af­fect­ing the re­al pur­chas­ing pow­er of house­holds.”

Her con­cerns mir­ror the find­ings of the CP­SO re­port, which notes that food rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17 per cent of all Cari­com im­ports and is there­fore high­ly vul­ner­a­ble to in­creas­es in trans­porta­tion and lo­gis­tics costs. Be­cause ship­ping sur­charges are ap­plied per con­tain­er rather than based on car­go val­ue, sta­ples of­ten bear a dis­pro­por­tion­ate bur­den.

Ac­cord­ing to Attzs, low­er-in­come house­holds are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble be­cause food con­sumes a larg­er share of their in­come.

“For the most vul­ner­a­ble, even rel­a­tive­ly small in­creas­es can nar­row al­ready lim­it­ed choic­es and force per­sons to choose be­tween food and oth­er es­sen­tial ex­pens­es,” she said.

She al­so high­light­ed the pres­sures fac­ing par­ents al­ready strug­gling to meet ed­u­ca­tion, trans­porta­tion and house­hold ex­pens­es.

“For fam­i­lies al­ready stretch­ing lim­it­ed in­comes, small in­creas­es across sev­er­al every­day items can quick­ly be­come a sig­nif­i­cant ad­di­tion­al bur­den. In­di­vid­u­al­ly, each price in­crease may ap­pear rel­a­tive­ly mod­est; cu­mu­la­tive­ly, how­ev­er, they can ma­te­ri­al­ly erode a house­hold’s pur­chas­ing pow­er and its abil­i­ty to meet ba­sic needs.” ​

Cari­com must act ur­gent­ly

An­toine fur­ther ar­gued that the com­po­si­tion of Cari­com’s im­port bill should dic­tate the re­gion’s re­sponse, warn­ing that sev­er­al long-stand­ing pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties have now be­come ur­gent eco­nom­ic im­per­a­tives.

The most im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty, he ad­vised, is ex­pand­ing im­port sourc­ing with­in the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

Draw­ing on prod­uct-lev­el analy­sis con­duct­ed by the CP­SO, he not­ed that agri­cul­ture has emerged as a rel­a­tive suc­cess sto­ry, with re­gion­al prod­ucts al­ready re­plac­ing some im­ports from out­side the re­gion.

How­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion is less en­cour­ag­ing for in­dus­tri­al and non-agri­cul­tur­al goods.

An­toine said Cari­com con­tin­ues to re­ly heav­i­ly on dis­tant sup­pli­ers for prod­ucts that could po­ten­tial­ly be pro­duced clos­er to home.

He ar­gued that strength­en­ing re­gion­al pro­duc­tion where ca­pac­i­ty al­ready ex­ists of­fers the quick­est pro­tec­tion against fu­ture sup­ply chain shocks, while build­ing new ca­pac­i­ty must be­come a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty over the next decade.

A sec­ond pri­or­i­ty is ac­cel­er­at­ing trade di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion with­in Latin Amer­i­ca and Mex­i­co.

An­toine said stud­ies, in­clud­ing the De­risk­ing CSME Im­ports and Sourc­ing Smarter analy­ses, have al­ready iden­ti­fied spe­cif­ic coun­try-prod­uct op­por­tu­ni­ties where sup­pli­ers in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean can com­pet­i­tive­ly re­place im­ports cur­rent­ly sourced from dis­tant mar­kets.

“The an­a­lyt­i­cal case is set­tled,” An­toine said, ar­gu­ing that the prob­lem is no longer a lack of ev­i­dence but a lack of ur­gency.

He said com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships, ship­ping arrange­ments, busi­ness-to-busi­ness con­nec­tions and trade diplo­ma­cy have ad­vanced too slow­ly giv­en the risks now con­fronting the re­gion. Every de­lay, he warned, leaves Cari­com ex­posed to high­er trans­porta­tion costs and sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions.

An­toine al­so called for the fast-track­ing of re­forms to the Cari­com trade regime to en­cour­age the pro­duc­tion of in­ter­me­di­ate goods.