Alcohol smuggling is rampant The Bolivian government loses $118 million a year

Bolivia's government is costing $118m a year in economic losses from the smuggling of alcoholic beverages, according to a recent study by Euromonitor International, the world's leading market research agency.
, the beer industry has been hardest hit by smuggling.
Bolivia's Seven Pages newspaper reported on December 16th that the study showed that Bolivia's consumption of smuggled alcoholic beverages accounted for 15.4% of total consumption of alcoholic beverages, and that the rampant smuggling of alcoholic beverages was mainly related to currency exchange rates, the production capacity of alcoholic beverages, the tax burden and other factors.
Blazicevic, director of relations at Bolivia's state-run brewery (CBN), said the number of beer smuggled in Bolivia rose by 39 per cent between 2016 and 2019, from 24.2308 million litres to 33.7283 million litres.
Blazicevich also said Bolivia's alcoholic beverage market is awash with smuggled beer from Brazil and Argentina, and that the quality of smuggled beer is a greater threat to people's health because the quality of smuggled beer is not controlled by the government.
In addition, the provinces of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, Pando and Cochabamba are the most affected by the smuggling of alcoholic beverages, mainly related to the lax regulation of smuggling by local customs, armed forces and government agencies such as the Agricultural Health and Food Safety Authority (Senasag).
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