BUSINESS

Beer Duties Increase Passed in First Parliament Reading

Bloomberg

MOSCOW — Russian lawmakers accepted a bill that may triple the excise tax on beer next year in the first of three readings.

The draft law would raise the tax on beer with an alcohol content of 0.5 percent to 9 percent over the next three years, the lower house of parliament said in a statement on its web site Friday. The tax would increase next year to nine rubles a liter from three rubles, followed by an 11 percent increase in 2011 and a 20 percent increase in 2012, according to the draft.

The proposed tax increase “is bad news,” Heineken Chief Executive Officer Jean-Francois van Boxmeer told investors at a meeting in Amsterdam on Monday. “It’s a fierce increase at once. Will it have an impact on consumption and volume? Yes.”

Heineken is Russia’s third-largest beer maker, after Anheuser-Busch Inbev and Carlsberg, which owns the country’s largest brewer.

“Everybody is already thinking about what they can do, including us,” van Boxmeer said.

The Russian government predicts that the tax increases would average out to 50 percent over three years.

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