TCL set to raise prices; Young blames UNC

Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed has ad­vised cus­tomers of a pend­ing in­crease in ce­ment prices fol­low­ing high­er man­u­fac­tur­ing costs and a pro­posed in­crease in nat­ur­al gas prices.

In a let­ter dat­ed Jan­u­ary 26, 2026, Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed said it has faced in­creas­es in costs re­lat­ed to raw ma­te­ri­als, pack­ag­ing and in­fla­tion. The com­pa­ny stat­ed that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny has pro­posed a sub­stan­tial in­crease in nat­ur­al gas prices to the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, with a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion ex­pect­ed by Jan­u­ary 31, 2026.

Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed said nat­ur­al gas is a crit­i­cal in­put in ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing and not­ed that it does not sup­port the pro­posed in­crease. The com­pa­ny said it con­tin­ues to en­gage with stake­hold­ers but in­di­cat­ed that the ex­pect­ed in­crease rep­re­sents an un­avoid­able cost im­pact that would re­quire a re­vi­sion to ce­ment prices. Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed said any price ad­just­ment would be im­ple­ment­ed short­ly af­ter con­fir­ma­tion of the gas price in­crease.

The com­pa­ny said it re­mains a con­trib­u­tor to em­ploy­ment, lo­cal sup­ply chains and for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion and stat­ed that main­tain­ing op­er­a­tions is nec­es­sary to en­sure con­tin­ued sup­ply to the mar­ket.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­spond­ed to the de­vel­op­ment, at­tribut­ing the sit­u­a­tion to gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. Young said, “This is an ex­am­ple of the UNC’s in­com­pe­tence and the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of their con­tin­ued im­po­si­tion of hard­ship on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cit­i­zens.”

Young said the pro­posed in­crease in gas prices, “up to 70% in­creas­es,” would af­fect man­u­fac­tur­ers and con­sumers. “The price in­creas­es of nat­ur­al gas to our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is go­ing to lead to in­creas­es in the price of goods to us, the cit­i­zens and con­sumers,” he said.

Young added, “Ex­pect price in­crease with food prices as well,” and said the Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to the en­er­gy sec­tor has led to job loss­es, for­eign ex­change im­pacts, busi­ness clo­sures and high­er prices.