ABSTRACT
But while many scholars have taken the profitability of the monopolies as a given, others have noted the high operating costs of the monopolies. Analysing the tobacco monopoly in the Philippines, Edilberto C. de Jesus concluded that it probably
In 1913, Inspector General Pherivong's subordinate Inspector Berrue made a detailed examination of the alcohol monopoly in Tonkin and North Annam, which by then had been functioning for 10 years. Accepting the administration's argument that sales had increased since the institution of a system of regional wholesalers in 1910, Berrue based his calculations only on figures from the years 1911 and 1912. His purpose was to get a rough idea of two things: the actual net revenue generated by the regie, and the relative distribution of the revenue from the retail price of alcohol. In a calculation that certainly underestimated the cost of enforcing the alcohol monopoly, Berrue concluded that average annual net revenue generated by the alcohol regime in Tonkin and North Annam was about 1,100,000 piastres. This meant that annual net revenue generated by the regie in Tonkin and North Annam was only 28 per cent of the gross figure claimed by the Administration and an insignificant 2.7 per cent of the total revenue of the Indochinese budget. He was then able to break down the cost of a litre of alcohol sold to the consumer at 0.81 piastres (see Table 3).
