Do you remember the famous “Spirit supplier”, when one dexterous guy pumped cheap Byelorussian spirit into Lithuania?

Do you remember the famous “Spirit supplier”, when one dexterous guy pumped cheap Byelorussian spirit into Lithuania? And he did it using a gut stretched through the Lithuania-Byelorussia border! The last year for such a business was very profitable. But now the situation has changed. For all the “spirit suppliers”, moonshiners and illegal traders bad times have came. According to the specialists, month-by-month legal producers begin outweigh the illegal ones. And at last the statistics show: this official production of vodka has almost doubled. And nobody could even imagine that as soon as the duty on the strong drinks is diminished, the Lithuanian producers of vodka will revive. After having pushed off the illegal producers into the less lightened corner of the ring, the Lithuanian producers of the strong drinks, the producers of the soft drinks and the importers of the alcohol are to fight for their share of the market. Because of the internal competition and money spent on the advertising, the production of the Lithuanian bear has increased by one fifth. Such an increase had great impact on wine production; its productivity has fallen by almost one third. The producers of wine are for the raising of duty on vodka, of course. But some of them found another alternative — they try to enter the line of producers of vodka. If the approach that the increasing turnover of the producers of strong drinks shows that after the prices of vodka were diminished the consumers gave up drinking moonlight, then this is another fact, which confirms, that the Lithuanians prefer strong drinks to the soft ones. And there is nothing special about it. By the way, the notes that the amount of consumers of alcohol in different countries increases promptly are announced every day. But then there is a paradox: chess are replaced with unhealthy alcohol! Instead of the chessman, the glasses, with vodka, for instance, are put. Having beaten up a chessman of the opponent you are to drink the content of the glass.



After having spoken to the Estonians, it may seem that they consider Lithuanians to be the kind-hearted visitors of the bars. Here is one Estonian anecdote about the Lithuanians: ”An Englishman drinks, the German, o good heavens, the Lithuanian cones into the bar.” Comparing with March, the retail trade of the alcohol has increased by one-tenth. At last, the progress in retail trade market is noticed; during this half-year the trade increased by 8%. Nevertheless, the International Currency Fund (ICF) forecasts that Lithuania lags behind Latvia and Estonia. Maybe because of our pessimistic features, or perhaps because of surplus of their intellectual energy those countries always leave us behind. Even the producers of the strong drinks complain that it is easier to export alcohol from Latvia and Estonia, than from Lithuania. Enter any shop and you will certainly find Lithuanian or Latvian vodka there. The laws of our neighbors are simpler, so they may easily enter our markets.