(ANSA) - Beer is no longer a favorite summer drink for Italians and according to brewers the reason is taxes.
Summer has traditionally been the season when Italians drink the most beer, but July beer consumption dropped 9% over the same month last year was was 19% less than July 2003.
This, according to data presented by the national brewers association Assobirra, showed that the decline in beer consumption was not limited to July but was part of a two-year trend.
Beer sales for the first six months of the year fell by 2.2%, compared to the same period last year, and were down 7% over the first half of 2003, Assobirra said. "This is a very disturbing trend which is in sharp contrast to what is happening for other summer beverages," observed Assobirra Chairman Piero Perron.
Italians like beer, drink beer and are well informed on its health benefits, Perron said, and thus the only explanation for the decline in consumption is its rising cost.
And the rise in costs, he pointed out, is not from production as much as from tax hikes which have been passed on to the consumer. In January 2004, Perron recalled, duties on beer production jumped 14% and in March of this year they leapt another 24%, "five-times the increase applied for spirits and
hard liquor."
And it's only going to get worse, he added, because in January 2006 another 14% hike is slated. "The bottom line is that in the space of two years taxes on beer will have gone up 90%," Perron pointed out.
But in the end, the Assobirra chairman observed, "the state is only shooting itself in the foot because the decline in beer consumption has resulted in a drop in revenue from sales tax, lower income for producers has meant less corporate tax and inevitable job layoffs have resulted in workers paying less income tax and contributing less to social security and welfare."
"This situation is severely hurting the Italian beer industry, which producers 73% of the beer consumed in Italy. And this is why the upcoming tax hike must be revoked," the Assobirra chairman said.
According to a poll take fro Assobirra, two out of three Italians drink beer and over one third consider it to be part of the Mediterranean diet. Beer received a major boost last month when researchers
announced that a prime ingredient in beer was more effective in fighting cancer than the better known substance in wine which touted as an anti-cancer agent.
According to the University of Varese, hoops contain Xanthohumol, an antioxidant which helps to 'starve' a tumor by retarding the development of blood vessels which feed its growth. Test also showed that it was 100 times more effective than resveratrol, the cancer-fighting agent found in red
wine.
