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Being locked in one of the toughest recessions in the European Union has not dampened Latvia's spirited love of beer, brewers in the Baltic state said Friday.
Gustavs Zatlers, marketing director of Cesu Alus, said his group's figures had remained steady amid the crisis in Latvia, a nation of 2.3 million people.
"Beer sales will remain at last year's level this summer, thanks to the good weather," Zatlers told the Baltic News Service (BNS).
Rather than cutting back, customers now shop around for cut-price deals.
"Notwithstanding the nearly 100-percent increase in excise tax this year, beer producers have been selling beer to their buyers for lower prices than last year due to the recession," said Zatlers, whose group traces its roots back to 1590.
While official statistics show that beer prices rose by 5.8 percent in July -- in part because of frantic efforts by the cash-strapped government to raise revenues -- evidence in bars in central Riga show that prices have plummeted compared to a year ago.
"We have observed that the habits of Latvian beer lovers do not change abruptly and remain stable even despite the complicated market situation," Jesper Golding, head of the brewer Cido Grupa, was quoted as saying by BNS.
Rival brewer Aldaris, however, wasn't so upbeat.
In June, it found that sales were on a par with the same month the previous year. June is usually a rosy month for Latvia's brewers, thanks to the traditional Midsummer holiday, and usually accounts for 10 percent of annual volume.
But in July, sales dropped markedly compared with the same month in 2008, said company spokeswoman Laura Krastina.
Latvia, which broke free from the crumbling Soviet bloc in 1991, had enjoyed a reputation as an economic success story, notably since joining the EU in 2004.
But after several years of double-digit growth, Latvia it last year tipped into one of the deepest recessions in the 27-nation EU.
Its economy is expected to contract 18 percent this year, and civil servants and private employees have seen their wages slashed in a belt-tightening drive, as unemployment climbs.
