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The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) yes­ter­day called for a phased ap­proach to the in­crease in the price of nat­ur­al gas to light man­u­fac­tur­ers, warn­ing that ris­ing costs for man­u­fac­tur­ers could have neg­a­tive knock-on ef­fects for con­sumers and ex­ports.

In a news re­lease in which it recog­nised that re­form was nec­es­sary, the T&T Cham­ber said that “any re­cal­i­bra­tion of en­er­gy and util­i­ty pric­ing should be ap­proached holis­ti­cal­ly, trans­par­ent­ly, and through na­tion­al di­a­logue, with the clear ob­jec­tive of en­sur­ing that eco­nom­ic re­turns ul­ti­mate­ly re­bound to the ben­e­fit of all cit­i­zens, while safe­guard­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness, em­ploy­ment, and ex­port-led growth.”

The busi­ness group­ing said that “a phased, rules-based ap­proach to sub­sidy ad­just­ment in­formed by mar­ket con­di­tions, in­clud­ing fluc­tu­a­tions in glob­al en­er­gy prices.”