Government bans copper exports for one year amidst increased vandalism

Ke­jan Haynes

The Gov­ern­ment has banned the ex­port of cop­per for one year, al­low­ing on­ly li­censed man­u­fac­tur­ers to ex­port the met­al un­der strict con­di­tions fol­low­ing a surge in cop­per theft and van­dal­ism of crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

The pro­hi­bi­tion took ef­fect on Ju­ly 10 un­der the Pro­hi­bi­tion (Car­riage Coast­wise, Im­por­ta­tion and Ex­por­ta­tion) Or­der, 2026, and will re­main in force un­til Ju­ly 9, 2027.

The Or­der amends the Third Sched­ule of the Pro­hi­bi­tion (Car­riage Coast­wise, Im­por­ta­tion and Ex­por­ta­tion) Or­der by re­mov­ing cop­per from the list of goods re­quir­ing ex­port li­cences and plac­ing it un­der a new cat­e­go­ry pro­hibit­ing its ex­port. As a re­sult, cop­per can no longer be ex­port­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous li­cens­ing regime and may on­ly be ex­port­ed by man­u­fac­tur­ers li­censed by the Min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for trade who sat­is­fy the pre­scribed con­di­tions.

Un­der the Or­der, man­u­fac­tur­ers must prove the source of their cop­per, pro­vide records of im­port­ed or lo­cal­ly pur­chased raw ma­te­ri­als, sub­mit pack­ing lists or in­voic­es, and un­der­go in­spec­tions by both the Min­istry's Trade Li­cence Unit and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion. First-time ap­pli­cants must al­so pro­vide de­tailed com­pa­ny pro­files, while re­peat ap­pli­cants must ac­count for how pre­vi­ous ex­port li­cences were used and sub­mit ship­ping doc­u­ments.

The move marks a re­turn to tighter con­trols on cop­per ex­ports af­ter pre­vi­ous re­stric­tions in­tro­duced fol­low­ing a surge in cop­per theft and van­dal­ism of crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

In Au­gust 2022, the for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion im­posed a six-month ban on the ex­port of scrap iron and cop­per af­ter wide­spread thefts from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) in­fra­struc­ture dis­rupt­ed ser­vices across the coun­try. The Gov­ern­ment said the ban was need­ed to curb the grow­ing trade in stolen met­al, which had caused mil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age to pub­lic util­i­ties.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion wel­comed the lat­est mea­sure. Pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son said the as­so­ci­a­tion had long ad­vo­cat­ed ban­ning on­ly cop­per ex­ports rather than shut­ting down the en­tire scrap met­al in­dus­try.

"We wel­come the ban on the cop­per. It's not about we proud about it, but we think that if that hap­pens, it will save our in­dus­try," Fer­gu­son said.

He added: "If the gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to ban the whole in­dus­try, they would have put thou­sands of peo­ple out of work. We ap­pre­ci­ate what this gov­ern­ment did be­cause the last gov­ern­ment did ban the whole in­dus­try. When we told them, just ban the cop­per."

Fer­gu­son, how­ev­er, said the ban alone may not be enough. He ar­gued that peo­ple would still be able to buy cop­per lo­cal­ly and al­leged some could con­tin­ue ex­port­ing it il­le­gal­ly.

"One prob­lem we have, be­cause the peo­ple who are buy­ing the cop­per will still be al­lowed to buy the cop­per... they're go­ing through the back­door and ex­port­ing it," he said.