GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd's im­pend­ing 7 per cent ce­ment-price hike, which will take ef­fect from Feb­ru­ary 17, by the was dis­cussed when Cab­i­net met yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands.

The pro­posed hike in the price of ce­ment was re­ferred to Cab­i­net's sub-com­mit­tee, the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee for fur­ther dis­cus­sion.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try,Paula Gopee-Scoon, said the is­sue was still in dis­cus­sions.

The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try is ex­pect­ed to is­sue a state­ment soon on the is­sue, sources close to the is­sue said.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Pres­i­dent of the T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA), Glen Ma­habirs­ingh said the in­crease in the price of ce­ment will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly in­crease readymix con­crete, con­crete blocks and oth­er ce­ment re­lat­ed prod­ucts and by ex­ten­sion the over­all con­struc­tion cost.

Guardian Me­dia was told by an of­fi­cial at the Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) on Wednes­day that ce­ment will in­crease by 7 per cent, be­gin­ning with bagged ce­ment.

Bagged prod­ucts in­clude Pre­mi­um Plus, Eco Ce­ment and Plas­ta Mas­ta will be in­creased ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 17, TCL con­firmed on Wednes­day, while the in­crease in bulk ce­ment will take ef­fect from March 5.

In a re­sponse yes­ter­day, Ma­habirs­ingh al­so not­ed that the up­com­ing price ad­just­ment will rep­re­sent the fifth price in­crease ex­pe­ri­enced by the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and to mem­bers since De­cem­ber 2021.

He added the his­tor­i­cal ce­ment price changes with­in this sec­tor are as fol­lows:

* De­cem­ber 2021: 15%

* Au­gust 2022: 7%

* March 2023: 5%

* Feb­ru­ary 2024: 7.67%

* Feb­ru­ary 2025: 7%

"In sum­ma­ry, these price in­creas­es have tran­spired over 39 months. In 2024, the ex-fac­to­ry price of a sack of Eco Ce­ment was 47.00 VAT ex­clu­sive (VE). With an an­tic­i­pat­ed in­crease of sev­en per cent, we es­ti­mate the price to be around 50.29 VE," Ma­habirs­ingh said.

How­ev­er, he added that con­trac­tors are com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing "eq­ui­table com­pe­ti­tion among all in­dus­try par­tic­i­pants," adding that this ap­proach not on­ly plays a cru­cial role in man­ag­ing in­fla­tion but al­so en­cour­ages fur­ther in­vest­ment in de­vel­op­ing the na­tion's in­fra­struc­ture.

Ma­habirs­ingh added that the TTCA has con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, un­der­stand­ing that the key ben­e­fit lies in main­tain­ing open and fair mar­ket con­di­tions.

"Such con­di­tions help to re­duce the risk of ar­bi­trary price in­creas­es for goods pro­duced do­mes­ti­cal­ly," he said.

Mex­i­co’s Ce­mex group is TCL’s largest share­hold­er, with a 69.83 per cent stake in the ce­ment pro­duc­er. Last year’s hike an­nounce­ment prompt­ed cab­i­net to sus­pend the im­port quo­ta on ce­ment to open the lo­cal mar­ket to com­pe­ti­tion, not­ing that TCL had raised ce­ment prices in De­cem­ber 2021 by 15.6 per cent; 7.0 per cent in Au­gust 2022; 5 per cent in March 2023; and 7.6 per cent in Feb­ru­ary 2024.

How­ev­er, the waiv­er was not enough to en­cour­age TCL’s last ma­jor mar­ket com­peti­tor, Rock Hard Ce­ment, back to the lo­cal mar­ket. Rock Hard with­drew from T&T on Sep­tem­ber 17, 2021, af­ter los­ing a le­gal bat­tle with the Gov­ern­ment.

TCL re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $210.6 mil­lion for the nine months end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, which was a 24.4 per cent in­crease over the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2024 when TCL raised the price of ce­ment last, the com­pa­ny then not­ed, “This de­ci­sion is un­avoid­able to cope with the es­ca­lat­ing costs of nat­ur­al gas, raw ma­te­ri­als, spare parts, and oth­er es­sen­tial in­puts, which have risen sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the past year. We have con­tin­ued to in­vest in en­hanc­ing our ef­fi­cien­cies, up­grad­ing our tech­nol­o­gy, and op­ti­mis­ing our process­es to min­imise the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of our op­er­a­tions.

“How­ev­er, these ac­tions are in­suf­fi­cient to mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive ef­fect of in­fla­tion on our busi­ness. De­spite this price ad­just­ment, Trinidad & To­ba­go still re­tains the most com­pet­i­tive price of ce­ment in the Cari­com re­gion.”