Ten days af­ter Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, an­nounced a 100 per cent in­crease in the ex­cise du­ty on all cig­a­rettes, smok­ers are still buy­ing the prod­uct at pre-bud­get prices.

In de­liv­er­ing the bud­get, Tan­coo re­ferred to high­er cus­toms du­ties on rum and spir­its, beer and to­bac­co prod­ucts, stat­ing that the du­ties on cig­a­rettes would dou­ble from $5.26 to $10.52 per pack of 20.

The of­fi­cial Gazette of the in­crease refers to an ex­cise du­ty, which is a tax im­posed on lo­cal­ly pro­duced goods, while a cus­toms du­ty is im­posed on im­port­ed goods.

Tan­coo said the in­crease in the du­ties on to­bac­co prod­ucts would take ef­fect im­me­di­ate­ly.

But, up to last night, lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er of cig­a­rettes, West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Ltd (Wit­co) had not is­sued a new pric­ing regime to the su­per­mar­kets, gro­ceries, min­i­marts and ven­dors that sell its prod­ucts.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia last night, Wit­co’s head of cor­po­rate and reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs Ger­von Abra­ham, said the Champs Fleurs-based com­pa­ny ac­knowl­edged the Gov­ern­ment of T&T’s an­nounce­ment of the dou­bling in ex­cise du­ty on to­bac­co prod­ucts, as out­lined in the 2026 na­tion­al bud­get.

“As a long­stand­ing lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er with over a cen­tu­ry of her­itage, Wit­co sup­ports the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er fis­cal and eco­nom­ic ob­jec­tives,” the cig­a­rette man­u­fac­tur­er said. “How­ev­er, the mag­ni­tude of this ex­cise ad­just­ment does present chal­lenges to the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the le­git­i­mate to­bac­co in­dus­try and the hun­dreds of liveli­hoods it sup­ports.”

In re­sponse to the new ex­cise struc­ture, Wit­co said it “has not yet is­sued any price ad­just­ments across its prod­uct range. This de­ci­sion is not a sim­ple one and has to be dri­ven by the need to main­tain busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, safe­guard lo­cal em­ploy­ment and mit­i­gate the risks posed by il­lic­it trade, which of­ten flour­ish­es un­der steep tax regimes.”

The man­u­fac­tur­er said it re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with Gov­ern­ment and law en­force­ment to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the lo­cal mar­ket and en­sure com­pli­ance with all reg­u­la­to­ry oblig­a­tions.

A com­pa­ny source said, “We MUST ap­ply the ex­cise tax­es as an­nounced and ap­proved. The de­ci­sion to be made is how much of the im­pact on cost do we pass on to the re­tail­er/cus­tomer with­out dam­ag­ing our com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion, one that is im­pact­ed by the il­lic­it trade.”

Wit­co’s dom­i­nance of the lo­cal cig­a­rette mar­ket has been im­pact­ed by a flood of il­lic­it cig­a­rettes that do not pay the tax­es the com­pa­ny does.

In the last six weeks, in an at­tempt to com­pete with the il­lic­it im­ports, Wit­co rein­tro­duced its Du Mau­ri­er brand to the lo­cal mar­ket, at the rec­om­mend­ed re­tail price of $16 for a short pack of 20 cig­a­rettes.

In its 2024 an­nu­al re­port, Wit­co re­port­ed rev­enue of $623.4 mil­lion, which was 17.4 per cent less than the $755.1 mil­lion the com­pa­ny gen­er­at­ed in 2023.

Wit­co’s af­ter-tax prof­it in 2024 de­clined by 35.9 per cent to $177.6 mil­lion

Some 50.13 per cent of Wit­co is owned by the multi­na­tion­al to­bac­co gi­ant, British Amer­i­can To­bac­co (In­vest­ments) Ltd.