By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#TurksandCaicos, February 9, 2023 – “Turks and Caicos customers basically pay a round trip freight,” was the reiterated revelation from shipping expert, Carl Simmons as he explained why inflation rates and food prices in the Turks and Caicos are sky high. Simmons, who owns Cargo Express and Tropical Shipping was a guest on Tuesday on Financially Speaking, a radio show hosted by Drexwell Seymour, aired on RTC.
“Say for example you’re on American Airlines and you go to Miami you pay to go and you pay to come. TCI customers from the shipping perspective basically pay two ways, the ship comes here with cargo and goes back empty because we don’t produce anything.”
According to the Turks and Caicos Department of Statistics, TCI exported $2.6 million in goods in 2022; a figure hugely surpassed by imports to the country which was at its highest in five year, recorded to be $681.4 million.
Carl Simmons made his statement when queried on why his own company was not opening shipping routes between the Turks and Caicos and other Caribbean countries who produce some of the goods that come from overseas; goods
that tend to be higher in cost. He explained another issue contributing to the cost factor.
“It’s volume driven, and that’s important, our population is very small, we don’t have anything to trade back through CARICOM we have no industry” he explained further why this was so harmful.
“Freight to the other islands is a little bit cheaper– they [shippers] can pick up cargo to take back between those islands”
This makes the trips cheaper for the shippers as they recover some of the cost along the way, a benefit sorely lacking in the TCI. Another issue was the country’s lack of proper maritime facilities to incentivize shippers.
“We are lacking a deep water harbour, if we had [one] we could have gotten ships with more capacity to bring containers from the US drop off a percentage of them to Grand Turk or Provo and continue on to another island but we cannot consider that option at all so the cost goes up again.”
Simmons, has for well over a decade been making recommendations and pointing to the many missed opportunities for port operations. The ideas include a transshipment port, which he and others have cited as possible as far back as 2000. The port would dramatically slash the cost of living for islanders by double digit percentages, he says.
At the time, in the year 2000 the place that I identified as a Transshipment port was Grand Turk; unfortunately it fell on deaf ears.”
Four years later, Simmons told listeners the Dominican Republic executed the idea with their Caucedo Port and now the opportunity has passed for TCI.
Seymour, a CPA by profession added that several essential companies have confirmed expenses in shipping are a driver of higher prices; he named: FortisTCI and grocery stores.
Food inflation and electricity rocketed sky high in 2022 causing extreme stress on consumers, forcing the government to provide relief through duty discounts and subsidising power bills to the tune of over $20 million dollars.