If you have lemons, make lemonade is an old saying. The Dominican variation, as seen in several advertisements, is for some of the nation’s retailers to absorb the recent tax increases, at least for the time being. Several companies and traders announced separately that in order to ease pressure on their customers’ wallets, they would absorb the 2% VAT (ITBIS) increase and the 8% tax levied on mass consumption products and approved with the tax reform law during the month of January (others said all year long).
The first company to announce this initiative was Bravo Supermarkets with their Saturday 29 December announcement that “prices would remain the same even with the ITBIS increase that goes into effect on 1 January” and they promised to freeze prices of more than 8,000 products until 31 January.
In the meantime, La Sirena (Pola), in a paid advertisement that appears in today’s press, Wednesday 2 January, says that “none of the food products would increase in price in our stores because of the ITBIS during the month of January.” They said that some 662 articles on their list of food products would have been affected by the 8% ITBIS tax, including oil, sugar, coffee, cocoa, butter, margarine and yogurt.
At the same time, Delta Comercial, S.A. told its customers and business contacts in another paid announcement that they would also absorb the increase in the ITBIS in all its parts departments and repair shops for all of 2013.
Helados Bon have also published that “we will maintain the same prices with the same quality” and that they would increase their love but not their prices.