National Milling Company (Namilco) workers yesterday held a protest in front of Buddy’s International Hotel at Providence to coincide with the start of a Caricom trade meeting, charging that the business would go under if the dumping of Trinidadian flour continued here.
The exercise, according to Managing Director of Namilco, Bert Sukhai is to draw attention to the issue.
“The evidence is there to show that there is dumping.” He declared that the companies were selling flour cheaper here than in Trinidad and pointed out that a bag of Namilco flour costs $5,955 with VAT while the Trinidadian flour sells for $5,200. “Namilco will go under if dumping continues,” he declared.
Questioned on the issue shortly after the opening session of the Council on Trade and Economic Development meeting, Guyana’s Minister of Foreign Trade, Dr Henry Jeffrey told reporters that he had written to his counterpart, Trinidad Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Keith Rowley and he in turn had written to the milling company. According to Jeffrey, the response received was that the price was lower because it was an introductory price but that it would eventually go up. Dr Rowley who was at the meeting told reporters that he was unaware of the matter.
Chanting “Save jobs, no dumping” and “Buy local, save jobs” among other slogans and holding placards some of which read ‘Namilco will go under if dumping continues’, ‘Trinidad Flour Mills sells flour cheaper than wheat to Guyana’, among others, the workers paraded up and down a section of the road under the eyes of a few police ranks.
Sukhai said the workers had asked to protest and pointed out that were the mill to close, over 100 employees would be directly affected and over 200 persons would be indirectly affected. The managing director revealed that the plant was currently operating at 40% capacity and while the company had attempted to get into the export market and had even sent samples to Suriname and Barbados, and received a favourable response, its price could not match the other countries’. He said too that in Barbados the container took a long time to be cleared.
Pointing to the price of wheat on the world market, Namilco employee Matthew Daymon charged that the Trinidadian companies are “dumping flour here at a lower cost than production”. He declared that the price at which the Trinidadian flour was being sold was uncompetitive.
Daymon, who is a miller at Namilco, noted that the company had been forced to lower its price, had improved on its products and was creating more value-added products. He said that the port system also hampered the company’s drive to be more competitive since the company could not bring the amount of wheat it would like, as large ships could not come into the port in Georgetown. He asserted that Trinidad, with its ability to handle larger ships, could afford to sell cheaper and declared that even so, Namilco produced the best “flour in the Caribbean”.
“We are not afraid of competition but let it be on a level playing field,” Daymon declared. He said the protest was to get the customers to understand what was happening and “what could be happening
