Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ex­cise du­ties on Cari­com-man­u­fac­tured malt bev­er­ages, beer, rum, cig­a­rettes and to­bac­co have been in­creased 100 per cent, match­ing the 100 per cent in­crease on lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured beer, rum and to­bac­co prod­ucts stip­u­lat­ed in the 2026 Bud­get.

This was in­di­cat­ed by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, as he spoke dur­ing a mo­tion amend­ing re­cent ex­cise du­ty bills on to­bac­co prod­ucts and al­co­holic bev­er­ages via the Cus­toms Im­port Du­ty (Caribbean Com­mon Mar­ket) (Amend­ment) Or­der, 2025).

He added, “I want to put the coun­try on no­tice that we’re look­ing at vapes as well be­cause the pub­lic, es­pe­cial­ly the younger gen­er­a­tions, are mov­ing away from to­bac­co to vapes.

“Vapes are al­so harm­ful. Stud­ies are still be­ing done to de­ter­mine the ex­tent of dam­age they cause com­pared to cig­a­rettes. Gov­ern­ment is look­ing and will con­tem­plate the re­quired ac­tion against vapes in the near fu­ture.”

Swarats­ingh said the Bud­get’s de­ci­sion to in­crease ex­cise du­ties on rum, spir­its, beer and to­bac­co isn’t a puni­tive mea­sure, but a planned and well-thought-out ini­tia­tive aimed at a mul­ti-pronged re­sult for T&T’s phys­i­cal, so­cio-eco­nom­ic and fu­ture well-be­ing. The in­creas­es will yield $1 bil­lion in rev­enue.

De­tail­ing a high in­ci­dence of smok­ing and drink­ing—and the cost on health­care—Swarats­ingh said the in­creas­es were a “win-win” sit­u­a­tion to earn rev­enue and re­duce smok­ing/al­co­hol con­sump­tion.

Swarats­ingh said the or­ders in the Bud­get in­creased the rates of ex­cise du­ty on beer, rum, malt bev­er­ages, cig­a­rettes and to­bac­co by 100 per cent

He added, “When this was im­ple­ment­ed, the Fi­nance Min­istry re­ceived feed­back from the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in­di­cat­ing they had now been sub­ject­ed to an un­fair dis­ad­van­tage.”

He said with the ex­ist­ing rates on for­eign and Cari­com beer, rum, malt bev­er­ages, cig­a­rettes and to­bac­co, the min­istry still cal­cu­lat­ed buffers on these prod­ucts.

“The ex­cise rate on rum is $158.50 per litre alc/vol, which ac­tu­al­ly works out to $72.91 per bot­tle of rum. The rate of du­ty for for­eign rum (out­side Cari­com) is $92.28, so we still have a buffer of $19.37. Re­gard­ing beers, we have a buffer of 26 cents ($.26) for for­eign beer (out­side Cari­com).

“Re­gard­ing cig­a­rettes, the rate of du­ty for for­eign cig­a­rettes (out­side Cari­com) is very high at 78.84%. For malt bev­er­ages, the rate of du­ty for for­eign malt bev­er­ages (out­side Cari­com) is 20%. So there is suf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion here as well,” he not­ed.

“How­ev­er, Cari­com rates on malt bev­er­ages, beer, rum, cig­a­rettes and to­bac­co need­ed to be ad­just­ed. In light of this, Gov­ern­ment made a de­ci­sion to in­crease all re­lat­ed al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts by 100 per cent.”

Con­se­quent­ly, the ex­cise du­ty and oth­er or­ders were made on Oc­to­ber 17 and pub­lished Oc­to­ber 2, he said.

Swarats­ingh added, “These new ex­cise or­ders ef­fec­tive­ly in­crease the rates on all prod­ucts that can be in com­pe­ti­tion with beer, rum and cig­a­rettes lo­cal­ly. There­fore, it in­cludes items such as whiskey, gin, vod­ka, cig­ars and cig­a­r­il­los.

“The idea be­hind this is: if whiskey, gin, vod­ka and oth­er spir­its are very close in price to rum, then con­sumers would grav­i­tate to­wards those oth­er prod­ucts. A sim­i­lar rea­son ex­ists be­hind cig­ars and cig­a­r­il­los.”

Cig­a­rettes smug­gled in­to T&T

Swarats­ingh said, the Cus­toms (Im­port Du­ty) (Caribbean Com­mon Mar­ket) (Amend­ment) Or­der amends the rate of im­port du­ty payable on all Cari­com prod­ucts ex­act­ly on the same terms as ex­cise rates which ap­ply on­ly to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers.

“This is in keep­ing with the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff agreed un­der Cari­com, and pro­motes the free move­ment of goods be­tween mem­ber states. In oth­er words, both lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts and Cari­com-man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts are taxed ex­act­ly the same and this has al­ways been the case.”

Some in­creas­es of for­eign prod­ucts are:

Beer: $10.54 per litre to $21.08 per litre

Stout: $13.19 per litre to $26.38 per litre

Sparkling wine: $105.46 per litre to $210.92 per litre

In the case of cig­a­rettes and oth­er re­lat­ed to­bac­co prod­ucts, those items were in­creased from around 78.84 per­cent to 95 per cent.

He said these or­ders will now pro­tect both lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and Cari­com man­u­fac­tur­ers.

In the case of the Mis­cel­la­neous Tax­es (To­bac­co Tax) Or­der, this is an ad­di­tion­al tax on for­eign to­bac­co prod­ucts that is set at the ex­ist­ing rates for lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers.

“As a re­sult, for­eign to­bac­co prod­ucts are heav­i­ly taxed,” he not­ed, adding the to­bac­co tax rates were al­so in­creased by 100 per cent.

Swarats­ingh said the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion ad­vised that there is heavy il­lic­it trade in cig­a­rettes.

“In some in­stances, cig­a­rettes that are man­u­fac­tured lo­cal­ly for ex­port to oth­er Cari­com mar­kets are smug­gled back in­to T&T and are now cheap­er, as ex­cise du­ties and cus­toms du­ties haven’t ap­plied. To com­bat il­lic­it smug­gling that hurts lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers, Gov­ern­ment in­tends beef­ing up Cus­toms and Ex­cise’s en­force­ment ap­pa­ra­tus, en­sur­ing a more lev­el play­ing field for lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers.”