The Gov­ern­ment has moved to sim­pli­fy the ex­port process for sev­er­al key con­struc­tion and in­dus­tri­al ma­te­ri­als, re­mov­ing them from the re­strict­ed ex­port list ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

A le­gal no­tice is­sued on Christ­mas Day amends the Open Gen­er­al Li­cence (No­tice to Ex­porters No. 1 of 1998). The amend­ment deletes a spe­cif­ic cat­e­go­ry of goods that pre­vi­ous­ly re­quired in­di­vid­ual ex­port per­mits: clays, crushed lime­stone, boul­ders, sand, grav­el, plas­ter­ing sand, por­cel­lan­ite, argillite, and oil sand.

By re­mov­ing these items from the "ex­cep­tions" list, the gov­ern­ment is bring­ing them un­der the blan­ket ap­proval of the

Open Gen­er­al Li­cence. This means that from the start of 2026, ex­porters will no longer be re­quired to ap­ply for spe­cif­ic, in­di­vid­ual li­cences from the Min­istry of Trade to ship these ma­te­ri­als abroad.

The amend­ment was signed by Trade, In­vest­ment, and Tourism Min­is­ter, Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj ex­er­cis­ing pow­ers un­der the Trade Or­di­nance and the Im­ports and Ex­ports Con­trol Reg­u­la­tions. The move is ex­pect­ed to re­duce ad­min­is­tra­tive red tape for the quar­ry­ing and min­ing sec­tors, al­low­ing for more flu­id in­ter­na­tion­al trade of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s min­er­al re­sources.

Ed­i­tor’s Note

A pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this analy­sis sug­gest­ed that delet­ing items from the Open Gen­er­al Li­cence (OGL) would make ex­port­ing more dif­fi­cult. In Trinidad and To­ba­go’s trade frame­work, the OGL func­tions as a Neg­a­tive List. There­fore, any item list­ed in the OGL is ac­tu­al­ly re­strict­ed. By "delet­ing" these con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als from that list, the Min­is­ter has ef­fec­tive­ly re­moved the re­quire­ment for a spe­cif­ic ex­port li­cence, there­by lib­er­al­is­ing their trade.