KY­RON REG­IS

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

The Chair­man of the West In­dies To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (WIT­CO) has con­firmed that it has in­creased the prices of its prod­ucts.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Ltd (GML), Phillip said: “Nor­mal­ly price in­creas­es are ap­proved by the board of di­rec­tors, and in this case we had a price in­crease.”

Phillip al­so con­firmed that this “is as a di­rect re­sult of the ex­cise in­crease on cig­a­rettes.” In the Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s re­cent Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, he an­nounced that the gov­ern­ment would raise ex­cise du­ties on lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured to­bac­co prod­ucts by 20 per cent.

How­ev­er, Phillip not­ed that WIT­CO has no con­trol on how much re­tail­ers would charge for the cig­a­rettes. He said that is why it re­cent­ly re­leased a “sug­gest­ed re­tail price” ad­ver­tise­ment in the me­dia.

This be­cause WIT­CO can­not make such sug­ges­tions manda­to­ry, said Phillip. Ac­cord­ing Phillip, re­tail­ers have been rais­ing their prices in re­sponse to ex­cise in­creas­es for a long time.

He re­called a par­tic­u­lar price in­crease in the 1980s, not­ing that up un­til then WIT­CO had not pro­duced the sug­gest­ed price list. As a re­sult, Phillip said “there was a free for all in the mar­ket and peo­ple start­ed to do all kinds of things.”

As a re­sult, Phillip said that the com­pa­ny in­sti­tut­ed a pol­i­cy of print­ing the sug­gest­ed price list on all lev­els to safe­guard the cus­tomers and re­tail­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to Phillip, the com­pa­ny has es­tab­lished a rec­om­mend­ed price at which re­tail­ers should by from the dis­trib­u­tors. The WIT­CO Chair­man said there is al­so a price from which the dis­trib­u­tors buy from the com­pa­ny as a re­sult of the ex­cise in­crease.

As a re­spon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen, Phillip not­ed that WIT­CO’s pub­lish­ing of the sug­gest­ed price in­crease serves the best in­ter­est of its cus­tomers. When asked if the price hike re­sult­ing from the ex­cise in­crease would be passed on to the cus­tomer, Phillips said, “yes it will be.”

When asked if the price in­crease im­pact the com­pa­ny’s bot­tom line Phillip said, by and large, the price of good in­flu­ences the choice of the cus­tomer.

He ex­plained, “So the ques­tion about the bot­tom-line, like any well run com­pa­ny, we are go­ing to man­age that to make sure at the end of the day that there’s eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

Phillip said that the com­pa­ny has no con­trol over the var­i­ous tax­es im­posed by the gov­ern­ment. Nonethe­less, the Chair­man main­tained that WIT­CO has a lo­cal in­ter­est be­cause it is part of the en­vi­ron­ment, not­ing that the com­pa­ny pro­duces and sells its prod­uct in the coun­try.

He added: “And we have a spe­cial re­la­tion­ship with the gov­ern­ment be­cause we are the col­lec­tor of ex­cise, just like the al­co­hol in­dus­try, which dri­ves some of the in­come that the gov­ern­ment col­lects.”