Chamber seeks business feedback on alcohol duty increases

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is invit­ing busi­ness­es across the coun­try to weigh in on the im­pact of re­cent in­creas­es in al­co­hol du­ties an­nounced in the 2026 Bud­get.

In a state­ment, the Cham­ber said it is con­duct­ing a con­fi­den­tial sur­vey in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bev­er­age Al­co­hol Al­liance to as­sess the ef­fects of a 100 per cent in­crease in ex­cise and im­port du­ties un­der Le­gal No­tices 384 and 386 of 2025.

The Cham­ber is call­ing on man­u­fac­tur­ers, dis­trib­u­tors, re­tail­ers, ho­tels, bars, restau­rants, en­ter­tain­ment venues and small shops in­volved in the sale or ser­vice of al­co­holic bev­er­ages to par­tic­i­pate.

It said the sur­vey aims to gath­er da­ta on how the high­er du­ties are af­fect­ing op­er­a­tions, pric­ing, em­ploy­ment and over­all busi­ness sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“Help us build an ev­i­dence-based case for ad­vo­ca­cy and pol­i­cy en­gage­ment,” the Cham­ber stat­ed, not­ing that all re­spons­es will be treat­ed as strict­ly con­fi­den­tial.

The dead­line to com­plete the sur­vey is Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 28, 2026.

Busi­ness­es can ac­cess the sur­vey at:

https://cham­ber.org.tt/2026/cham­ber­im­pact­sur­vey