The Benefits of Lobbying

"Parliament postponed a routine hike in the excise tax on cognac for a year. According to the government plan approved in late 2008, the excise tax on cognac and brandy should have been raised 40% since the beginning of the current year. Now this increase has been postponed
to January 1, 2011.
Cognac in Ukraine is produced by fourteen enterprises. They lobbied the deferral of the increase in the excise tax in the Verkhovna Rada. The threat of moving production of cognac abroad to Moldova has played a key role here. After all, unlike the producers of vodka, wine and beer, cognac producers could have easily carried out their threat seeing as most cognac spirits in Ukraine are imported anyway,” said Maria Kolesnyk, Director of the Analytical Department of the AAA agency. “Now, vodka could lose up to 15-20% of the market to cheap cognac that costs up to UAH 100 a bottle,” she added."

http://eng.weekly.ua/accent/markets/2010/02/18/104943.html