The Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce is warning of another cement shortage and says that Trinidad Cement Limited (TCL) is failing to adequately meet demand.
The warning comes shortly after one importer of Venezuelan cement had promised that Guyana will no longer face cement shortages.
"The Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce is once again deeply concerned about the current unavailability of cement in Guyana and the adverse implications of this for consumers, contractors, and the construction industry as a whole," states a ministry release yesterday.
Fidelity Investment Inc., a company with ties to the Guyana, Fire, Life and General Insurance Company (GuyFlag) Inc., imported extra-regional cement from Venezuela in August to fend off cement shortages.
But after four months of selling cement at the wholesale price of $1000 the company has increased this to $1100. Fidelity officials were not available yesterday for comment.
Fidelity had plans to import 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes of cement monthly. The nation-wide use of cement is estimated at around 12,000 tonnes.
It was also stated in the release that TCL "has yet again failed to deliver on its promises to the Government of Guyana to ensure an adequate supply of cement to the Guyana market." By March 2005 an additional 9,400,000 bags of TCL cement per annum should be available as a result of expansions at its Trinidad plant.
The Ministry is calling on importers or other potential investors of cement to take full advantage of the Common External Tariff waiver to import extra-regional cement.
Joseph Singh, permanent secretary at the Ministry explained that several critical items are subject to ongoing monitoring and it was during this monitoring process that cement was discovered to be unavailable.
Singh says they are communicating with TCL to encourage the entity to pay greater attention to Guyana's needs. He says the government cannot fix the cement prices but believes that the prices remain stable based on market forces.
At R&R International Ltd., yesterday there was no cement in stock with the last retail price of the product being $1100. No company official was available for comment.
Anral Investment Ltd., also had no cement for a few days but was expecting cement today. One source still did not believe that there was a shortage of cement especially at Anral.
This company's last retail price was $1130 a decline from $1150 per sack in November.
While at Toolsie Persaud Ltd., there was no cement but the company was expecting the product by next Friday. Toolsie Persaud's retail price for cement has remained steady at $1110 per sack from last month.
In Linden, at Barrow's Hardware Store cement prices were increased to $1230 per sack and this price was expected to increase. Last month Barrow's had decreased their cement price from $1220 to $1200 because of lower whole prices.
Tony Amres, of Readymix Concrete Ltd., who buys cement from GuyFlag, believes that even if there is a shortage it is not as bad as in the past. "We have had worst moments," he says, adding that at least two types of Venezuelan cement are imported along with the TCL brand.