‘Hold Over’ letters issued to keep minerals sector active

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries has is­sued “Hold Over” let­ters to 25 bona fide op­er­a­tors in the min­er­als sec­tor, al­low­ing them to con­tin­ue min­ing and pro­cess­ing ac­tiv­i­ties while await­ing the re­new­al of ex­pired li­cences.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued, the min­istry said the let­ters were grant­ed on May 22, 2026, to op­er­a­tors with cur­rent­ly ac­tive op­er­a­tions whose min­ing and pro­cess­ing li­cences have ex­pired and are un­der re­view for re­new­al.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the tem­po­rary ap­provals will per­mit op­er­a­tors to con­tin­ue func­tion­ing un­der the same terms and con­di­tions as their pre­vi­ous li­cences for a pe­ri­od of one year while the re­new­al ap­pli­ca­tions are processed.

The min­istry said the move forms part of Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing an ad­e­quate sup­ply of min­er­als at af­ford­able prices to sup­port na­tion­al in­fra­struc­tur­al and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment.

Of­fi­cials not­ed that min­er­als re­main crit­i­cal to the con­struc­tion and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly as Gov­ern­ment ad­vances its TT Re­vi­tal­iza­tion Blue­print pro­gramme an­nounced in No­vem­ber 2025. The pro­gramme in­cludes 129 ma­jor con­struc­tion projects across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The min­istry stat­ed that en­sur­ing con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions in the min­er­als sec­tor would help main­tain suf­fi­cient sup­plies of ag­gre­gate need­ed to sup­port in­creased con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty while help­ing to sta­bilise prices for con­sumers.

It added that the de­ci­sion is al­so ex­pect­ed to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact em­ploy­ment lev­els across the coun­try. In­creased con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty is an­tic­i­pat­ed to gen­er­ate jobs not on­ly in con­struc­tion but al­so in sup­port­ing in­dus­tries such as trans­porta­tion, build­ing ma­te­ri­als, food ser­vices and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices.

The min­istry fur­ther re­vealed that it is re­view­ing a list of cur­rent­ly in­ac­tive op­er­a­tions linked to op­er­a­tors with ex­pired li­cences. Those op­er­a­tors are ex­pect­ed to be con­tact­ed in the com­ing weeks to de­ter­mine their in­ter­est in re­sum­ing ac­tiv­i­ties as part of ef­forts to in­crease ag­gre­gate pro­duc­tion and main­tain sta­ble prices.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­istry said it re­mains com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing new ap­pli­cants seek­ing li­cences for min­ing or pro­cess­ing op­er­a­tions.

To sup­port that process, quar­ter­ly “Open House Ses­sions” will be held in June 2026 to pro­vide ad­vice and as­sis­tance to per­sons re­new­ing ex­pired li­cences or ap­ply­ing for new ones.

Fur­ther de­tails on the ses­sions are ex­pect­ed to be an­nounced in the com­ing weeks.