San Miguel Corp., the Philippine beverage conglomerate has reported a 13% rise of its domestic beer sales in January-May this year, to 12.7 billion pesos (US$238m). The company’s volumes of beer sold in this period increased by 11% to 62.4m cases. Only in May beer sales rose by 15% reaching 2.68 billion pesos, on volumes up 12% to 13.2m cases. The company attributed the increase to more aggressive sales and distribution activities. "Brisk sales and lower production costs due to favourable raw material prices enhanced the division's profit performance," San Miguel said.

27 June, 2003