JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Bar­keep­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Satesh Moonasar says the price in­crease in al­co­hol is yet to be de­ter­mined, as the as­so­ci­a­tion is still as­sess­ing the im­pact of the 100 per cent hike in ex­cise du­ties.

In his first bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo an­nounced an im­me­di­ate in­crease in cus­toms and ex­cise du­ties on rum and spir­its, beer, and cig­a­rettes

Ad­di­tion­al fee ad­just­ments, in­clud­ing the dou­bling of Con­tain­er Pro­cess­ing Fees from $525 to $1,050 and Cus­toms De­c­la­ra­tion fees from $40 to $80, will come in­to force on Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

To­geth­er, these mea­sures are ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate an ex­tra $1 bil­lion in rev­enue. Over­all, the in­creas­es are ex­pect­ed to con­tribute to 80 per cent of pro­ject­ed rev­enue growth in the com­ing fis­cal year.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Moonasar said that even with­out the im­me­di­ate ex­cise hike, the rise in elec­tric­i­ty would have af­fect­ed drink prices. To­geth­er, the two fac­tors make it nec­es­sary for the as­so­ci­a­tion to pass on the costs.

“There’s no way that we could cal­cu­late what the raise will be; it is on­ly when the com­pa­nies send out their price list­ings that we could be able to cal­cu­late and say how much raise we got and what we will have to do in terms of ad­just­ing our prices as well. Be­cause a hun­dred per cent in­crease is some­thing that you re­al­ly can­not ab­sorb. It’s not a mi­nor in­crease; it’s a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease.”

He added that, pri­or to the an­nounce­ment, nei­ther he nor his mem­bers were con­sult­ed. When asked if he could in­di­cate by how much drink prices might rise, Moonasar de­clined to say.

“It is based on the com­pa­nies that we are wait­ing on be­cause dif­fer­ent prod­ucts will have dif­fer­ent in­creas­es based on the grav­i­ty and the al­co­hol per­cent­age of the dif­fer­ent prod­ucts. So there’s not one fig­ure that we could call off the top of our heads right now; it’s based on what the com­pa­nies send.”

Moonasar said the in­crease does not seem to im­pact in­ter­na­tion­al al­co­hol, as the cus­toms fees are for lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly man­u­fac­tured al­co­hol.

“From my un­der­stand­ing, the cus­toms du­ties are based on lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers, where­as there’s a dif­fer­ent part of the du­ty, which is the im­port du­ties of al­co­hol. Be­cause in a pre­vi­ous bud­get un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, there was an in­crease on im­port­ed al­co­hol and not lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers. From my un­der­stand­ing, it is on­ly charged on lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and re­gion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers, and in­ter­na­tion­al al­co­hol faces im­por­ta­tion du­ties; that’s two dif­fer­ent tax­a­tions.”

Moonasar said the in­crease ap­pears to have lit­tle ef­fect on in­ter­na­tion­al al­co­hol, as the cus­toms fees ap­ply on­ly to lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly pro­duced drinks.

He said he and his as­so­ci­a­tion have been seek­ing clar­i­ty from Gov­ern­ment on whether the in­creased tax­es will im­pact in­ter­na­tion­al im­ports as well.

He ex­plained that when lo­cal and re­gion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­duce al­co­hol, they are placed in a cus­toms bond where it is taxed be­fore it is re­leased and then re­turned to man­u­fac­tur­ers for sale.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Carib Brew­ery, AM­CO, and the T&T Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion. All three said they were not pre­pared to com­ment on the mat­ter.