Drinking culture | Beer sales outpace economic growth in Asia

The 23rd Qingdao International Beer Festival in Qingdao, in east China’s Shandong Province

Thailand will ban alcohol sales near universities and technical colleges, putting the nation at the forefront of efforts in Asia to curb consumption.
Under amendments to the Alcohol Control Act endorsed by the government yesterday and to be implemented nationwide late next month, bars, clubs and retailers will be prohibited from selling alcoholic beverages within a 300-meter radius of colleges. The measures are aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle and tackling alcohol-related problems, including underage sex, the Ministry of Public Health said.
Thailand is moving further than other governments in countering growing demand for alcohol in Asia and the Pacific, the fastest-growing beer market for brewer Heineken NV. The World Health Organization has called for a 10 percent reduction in the harmful use of alcohol by 2025 from 2010 levels, implicating it in more than 200 diseases and injury conditions that the UN agency says kill about 3.3 million people a year.
“Thailand has the strongest tradition of trying to curb alcohol consumption and reduce alcohol-­related harms,” said Juergen Rehm, professor and chair of addiction policy at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
Thailand’s government has a taxation mechanism that “enables them to tax the hell out of any beverage which is attractive to youth,” said Rehm, who has worked with Thai authorities on alcohol programs for the past decade.
Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, China and some states of India have also introduced policies over the past few years to sap alcohol demand. Beer sales in Vietnam have been climbing at least double the pace of gross domestic product growth the past five years and have averaged 6.2 percent annually across the region since 2009, according to Euromonitor International.
Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, the world’s largest brewer, opened a brewery near Ho Chi Minh City in May, bolstering its supplies of Budweiser and Beck’s beer.
“Asia Pacific is now the third largest zone of AB InBev in terms of volume, and Vietnam is considered the next turning point for us in Southeast Asia,” said Michel Doukeris, the Belgian brewer’s Asia-Pacific president, at an opening ceremony. The plant will eventually produce as much as 1 million hectoliters a year of the amber liquid.
Asia-Pacific will contribute more than 70 percent of global beer growth in the next five years, Heineken’s regional president, Roland Pirmez, told a conference in March 2014, citing Canadean projections.
Per-capital alcohol consumption averaged 29 liters in the region in 2013, compared with 59 liters in Europe and 48 liters in the rest of the world, presenting “untapped growth potential,” Pirmez said. The Amsterdam-based company increased its stake in United Breweries Ltd., India’s biggest beermaker, to 42.1 percent on July 7, less than a week before opening a USD60 million brewery near Yangon. Jason Gale and Suttinee Yuvejwattana, Bloomberg