TT Chamber urges port efficiency after customs fee hike

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is call­ing for im­prove­ments in port ef­fi­cien­cy and full adop­tion of dig­i­tal port sys­tems, fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment’s move dou­ble key cus­toms-re­lat­ed fees.

The new fees will take ef­fect to­mor­row, Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

The ad­just­ments, the first ma­jor re­vi­sion in more than two decades, will see the stan­dard cus­toms de­c­la­ra­tion pro­cess­ing fee rise from TT$40 to TT$80. Con­tain­er ex­am­i­na­tion fees will in­crease to TT$750 for 20-foot con­tain­ers and TT$1,050 for 40-foot con­tain­ers.

The Cham­ber ac­knowl­edged the Gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue con­sid­er­a­tions and the long-stand­ing stag­na­tion of these ad­min­is­tra­tive fees. How­ev­er, it said the in­creas­es must be ac­com­pa­nied by mea­sur­able im­prove­ments in cus­toms and port ef­fi­cien­cy, in­clud­ing re­duced car­go dwell times, stream­lined in­spec­tion pro­to­cols and digi­tised pro­cess­ing.

The Cham­ber said it looks for­ward to the de­liv­ery of long-promised mod­erni­sa­tion mea­sures, in­clud­ing the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of dig­i­tal cus­toms sys­tems and deb­it card pay­ment in­fra­struc­ture.

“Fee ad­just­ments must trans­late in­to val­ue for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty,” the TT Cham­ber said. “With­out ser­vice-lev­el im­prove­ments, these changes risk be­com­ing an added cost bur­den with­out cor­re­spond­ing gains in ef­fi­cien­cy.”

The Cham­ber al­so raised con­cerns about the cu­mu­la­tive im­pact of these and oth­er re­cent cost in­creas­es on mi­cro, small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, which it said typ­i­cal­ly op­er­ate with tighter mar­gins and less flex­i­bil­i­ty to ab­sorb ris­ing op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es.

It warned that the ad­di­tion­al costs could al­so feed in­to the wider econ­o­my by con­tribut­ing to high­er con­sumer prices and in­fla­tion­ary pres­sure.

As part of its con­tin­ued ad­vo­ca­cy for a com­pet­i­tive and re­silient trade en­vi­ron­ment, the Cham­ber said it is en­gag­ing with its mem­bers to de­vel­op a com­pre­hen­sive im­pact as­sess­ment of re­cent and pro­posed cost in­creas­es af­fect­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness. It said the as­sess­ment will in­form on­go­ing di­a­logue with pub­lic-sec­tor stake­hold­ers to en­sure pol­i­cy de­ci­sions sup­port na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness.

The Cham­ber reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to a con­tin­ued con­struc­tive part­ner­ship with the gov­ern­ment and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.