Carib Brew­ery's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Derek Wad­dell yes­ter­day con­firmed that the sug­gest­ed re­tail price of a Carib and Stag will be in­creased from $8 to $9. This new price is di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the 15 per cent in­crease in im­port du­ty on lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured rum, beer and al­co­hol prod­ucts an­nounced by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira dur­ing the 2009/2010 bud­get on Mon­day. The in­crease came in­to ef­fect yes­ter­day.

Wad­dell told the Guardian Mon­day there was no way the com­pa­ny was able to ab­sorb the in­crease and had no choice but to pass it on to con­sumers. The new prices were stud­ied by the com­pa­ny's man­age­ment on Mon­day and were fi­nalised yes­ter­day. They are ex­pect­ed to be pub­lished to­day. Tesheira al­so stat­ed in the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion that the im­port du­ty on rum, beer and al­co­holic prod­ucts from ex­tra re­gion­al sources would al­so be in­creased by 30 per cent.

She said the in­creas­es were ex­pect­ed to con­tribute an ad­di­tion­al $50 mil­lion to Gov­ern­ment's rev­enue.