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TCL Group CEO defends CET on cement

Nov 20, 2009 News

… says consolidation of manufacturing build economies of scale

Chairman of the Trinidad Cement Limited (TCL) Group, Dr Rollin Bertrand, has joined former Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur, in voicing his displeasure at the lack of vision and courage among current decision makers.
Dr Bertrand was at the time responding to some Trinidadian cement dealers who voiced support for the removal of the Common External Tariff on cement being imported into the region.
According to Dr Bertrand, businessmen and traders have a short memory. He said that by removing the CET there would be no incentive for investment.
The TCL Chairman explained that by removing that incentive, as factories get older some 10 to 15 years down the road, whoever is at the helm could decide that producing cement is too much of a tedious task. “Let’s just put up silos and import….then the whole region becomes subject to the vagaries of importation.”
He opined that in 20 years it would be noted that the decision makers of the day would have erred because “we were too short-sighted, because we did not understand the simple economics of incentivising investment…That is the problem with what I call the trading mentality in the Caribbean.”
According to Dr Bertrand, if decision-makers were to listen to traders in the Caribbean, “we would do nothing and we would make nothing…All we will do is buy, we would have nothing to sell…Do we have to keep learning that lesson again.”
He noted that in 1952, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago invited a British Company to set up a cement company in the twin-island Republic.
“They recognise that they have the raw material and we have to create investment and jobs etcetera…And they were given all sorts of incentives…60 years ago we understood the imperatives of investment…are we not going to learn the lesson rather than go back and redo it?”
The TCL Chairman pointed out that, “You get it for a better price from China… all you are doing is creating value for the Chinese economy or the Colombian or Venezuelan economy and the people on that side sit back and laugh, saying thanks.”
He noted that it is vision that has brought the region to where it is referring to CARICOM and the CSME. “That is the only way we could face a United Europe or a United States of America.”
Dr. Bertrand said that there is the need for the consolidation of production adding that a small cement plant in Claxton Bay or in Kingston, Jamaica cannot survive. “You have to have consolidation of manufacturing to build economies of scale.”
According to the TCL senior executive, “We have to have the courage…you want our children to be a CEO for a corporation, commanding the heights of the economy, or are we to be servants or warehouse receiving clerks?”
Media operatives toured the local cement bagging plant on Tuesday last, and heard that at no point since its inception has there been an inability to supply cement.
Plant Manager Mark Bender explained that outside of the three existing silos there is adequate storage capacity.

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