OREANDA-NEWS. February 6, 2012. Belarus’ beer market may be sustained at the 2011 level in 2012, Olivaria Brewery’s vice chief Nadezhda Deshkovets told.

“Belarus’ beer market showed considerable growth in 2011. Even though beer import had been on the decline since the middle of 2011, we presume, beer sales in 2011 will still be 1-2% higher than in 2010,” Deshkovets said.

The beer market had been growing actively until July 2011, but further growth was undermined by inflation, which triggered an increase in the price of imported raw materials and beer excises.

With beer imports going down, Belarusian breweries took the opportunity to fill in the niche, expanding the premium segment of home-brewed beer.

The expert believes that the development of Belarus’ beer market is impeded by the misbalance on the price of pure alcohol in beer and hard liquors. “In beer pure alcohol is prices 160% as much as in hard liquors, while in Russia it is only 50% as high. This is not an ideal ratio, but quite acceptable”, the expert said. In a situation like this, the customer chooses strong alcohol instead of beer. As a result, consumption of pure alcohol in Belarus stood at12.3 litres per capita in 2011, while the World Health Organization says the ceiling should be 8 litres per capita.

Beer producers voice concern over the fact that vodka consumption grew from 14.56 litres per capita in 2010 to 17.14 litres in 2011. At the same time, beer consumption stands at 52-52 litres per capita, which far below than in the neighbouring states. By increasing beer consumption Belarus hopes to reduce the consumption of hard liquors.

As reported by the National Statistics Committee, Belarus boosted beer production 18.5% in 2011 to 46.9 million dal, with beer sales growing 6.6% to 50.741 million. In the meantime, the sales of vodka and hard liquors in 2011 grew 17.7% to 16.267 million dal.