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Few in­dus­tries in T&T op­er­ate with mar­gins as thin and ex­pec­ta­tions as high as Car­ni­val. For mas­quer­ade bands, where the prod­uct is not sim­ply a cos­tum,e but an all-in­clu­sive, all-im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, every com­po­nent now sits un­der scruti­ny fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s 100 per cent hike in cus­toms and ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts.

Those mea­sures were an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo dur­ing his Oc­to­ber 13 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, in which he said that 80 per cent of the pro­ject­ed rev­enue in­creas­es in the 2026 bud­get are at­trib­ut­able to the hike in cus­toms du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts.

Un­der the re­vised struc­ture, du­ties on rum and spir­its dou­bled, ris­ing from $79.25 to $158.50 per cent of al­co­hol con­tent. Beer du­ties al­so dou­bled from $5.14 to $10.28 by grav­i­ty.