Hospitality and restaurant workers protest against high VAT in Vilnius
International news
Around 200 representatives of the hospitality sector staged a protest outside the government office in central Vilnius on Thursday, the 31st of October, to protest against the VAT increase from 9% to 21% that came into effect at the beginning of this year.
Evalda Šiškauskienė, president of the Association of Hotels and Restaurants in Lithuania, the organizer of the protest in Lithuania, said that “restaurants are now closing one after the other, and we already had 50 bankruptcies in the first half of this year, and there are many more bankruptcies registered.”
The profitability of restaurants is now 0.17%, according to the latest statistics. According to the State Data Agency, the turnover of restaurants, cafes and other catering companies in Lithuania amounted to 1.056 billion euros, excluding VAT, in the first eight months of the year, an annual drop of 7.3%.