Sean Nero

The wine and spir­its in­dus­try will be se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed if the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in­tro­duces new tax­es on al­co­holic bev­er­ages in the 2010/2011 bud­get, says Jose Nivet, chair­man of Al­ston Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (AM­CO). On Wednes­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an will un­veil gov­ern­ment's fis­cal pack­age to the Par­lia­ment, but Nivet is con­vinced that any new levies on al­co­hol could lead to the even­tu­al demise of T&T's wine and spir­its sec­tor. In a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view at Fri­day's tast­ing of De­war's scotch whiskey host­ed by AM­CO at the Carl­ton Sa­van­nah Ho­tel in Cas­cade, Port-of-Spain, Nivet said: "I don't think the wine and spir­it in­dus­try can af­ford an­oth­er tax in­crease.

Vol­umes have come down since the last in­crease, the econ­o­my is un­der pres­sure and the pop­u­la­tion will not ac­cept an­oth­er mar­ket price in­crease."

"What hap­pened last time, it did not just af­fect the con­sumers but busi­ness places; the peo­ple who in­vest­ed mon­ey in restau­rants, ho­tels, night clubs and bars. The pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment had its own agen­da on al­co­hol which was not pure­ly eco­nom­i­cal­ly dri­ven." He said the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion in two con­sec­u­tive bud­gets in­creased tax­es which neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the al­co­hol and to­bac­co sec­tors. For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Tesheira in­tro­duced a 15 per cent ex­cise du­ty on lo­cal rum, beer and oth­er al­co­hol prod­ucts in the 2009/2010 bud­get. A 30 per cent in­crease was im­posed on bev­er­ages from out­side the Caribbean.

In spite of the eco­nom­ic cli­mate AM­CO is forg­ing ahead with plans to ex­pand to the De­war's brand and con­se­quent­ly in­crease con­sump­tion.

Nivet said De­war's has a long her­itage in T&T, but was not the lead­ing brand in terms of vol­ume. He said the mar­ket for De­war's was spe­cif­ic to north/west Trinidad and de­clared the need to make it the pre­ferred so­cial scotch na­tion­al­ly. Fri­day's tast­ing was the last of four con­duct­ed lo­cal­ly by De­war's brand am­bas­sador Ewan Gunn. The tast­ing be­gan on Thurs­day with a for­mal meet and greet ses­sion which took place at AM­CO's Ch­agua­nas of­fice where par­tic­i­pants were en­light­ened about the his­to­ry of the scotch. Nivet said in­creas­ing con­sump­tion could on­ly be achieved by re-ed­u­cat­ing the drink­ing con­sumer about the brand and its qual­i­ty of taste.