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In T&T, we’ve of­ten heard the state­ment “there are over one mil­lion cars on the road.” This refers to the num­ber of reg­is­tered cars in the coun­try and does not take in­to ac­count dereg­is­tra­tion or in­op­er­a­ble ve­hi­cles. Over the last decade how­ev­er, over 213,000 ve­hi­cles have been reg­is­tered and yet fu­el sales have de­clined.

Over this pe­ri­od, there have been vari­a­tions of to­tal ve­hi­cle reg­is­tra­tions (both new and used) which cor­re­spond to the strength of the econ­o­my at the time. There was a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline dur­ing the pan­dem­ic lock­downs from 2020 – 2022, but since then there has been some lev­el of re­cov­ery in the num­ber of ve­hi­cles im­port­ed, al­though less than the highs in 2017 and 2019.

De­spite the ad­di­tion of new cars to the to­tal T&T fleet, liq­uid fu­el sales have shown a down­ward trend, with the biggest de­clines al­so be­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when road move­ment was re­strict­ed and a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion worked from home. As the re­stric­tions were re­moved, the fu­el sales picked up, but have since showed signs of de­cline for gaso­line and a plateau­ing of diesel sales.