Al­though the glob­al to­bac­co in­dus­try is fac­ing chal­lenges, West In­di­an To­bac­co (Wit­co) has re­port­ed a suc­cess­ful fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, earn­ing prof­it be­fore tax of $655.1 mil­lion for 2014.

The com­pa­ny's an­nu­al re­port, which was re­leased to the T&T Stock Ex­change yes­ter­day, shows a 17.8 per cent in­crease in prof­its over 2013 and prof­it for the year of $489.2 mil­lion.

"This con­tin­ued sol­id per­for­mance re­sult­ed par­tial­ly from im­proved ex­pense man­age­ment, dri­ven by fac­to­ry ef­fi­cien­cies and a con­sumer cen­tric fo­cus, with con­tin­ued in­no­va­tion in the pre­mi­um seg­ment of the mar­ket," Wit­co chair­man An­tho­ny E Phillip said in his re­port to share­hold­ers.

He said chal­lenges fac­ing the glob­al in­dus­try in­clud­ed traf­fick­ing of to­bac­co prod­ucts, with up to 12 per cent of glob­al vol­ume be­ing trad­ed on the black mar­ket.

"Lo­cal­ly, there was some nat­ur­al mar­ket con­trac­tion, cou­pled with an in­creased pres­ence of low-priced brands. Reg­u­la­tion of the in­dus­try al­so con­tin­ues to in­crease," Phillip said.

"The com­pa­ny recog­nis­es the need for sen­si­ble and bal­anced reg­u­la­tions which take in­to ac­count the rights of con­sumers, giv­en the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with to­bac­co. The un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences of flawed reg­u­la­tion must be avoid­ed.

"Mea­sures such as re­tail dis­play bans and high ex­cise could re­sult in con­sumers switch­ing to cheap­er, il­le­gal­ly traf­ficked prod­ucts. Sound reg­u­la­tion is im­por­tant in the to­bac­co in­dus­try and, where it is de­vel­oped with the in­volve­ment of key stake­hold­ers, could pro­mote an or­der­ly mar­ket­place that serves the in­ter­ests of both con­sumers and gov­ern­ment."

Wit­co is a mem­ber of the British Amer­i­can To­bac­co Group and is the lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­er of cig­a­rettes in T&T and the Caribbean, ser­vic­ing 22 Cari­com mar­kets.