The Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation saw a huge spike in sales on day one of the temporary GST/HST holiday, but things have leveled off considerably after that time.

Many restaurants are reporting a successful holiday season, in part due to an increase in customers taking advantage of the tax breaks.

NLC CEO Bruce Keating says interestingly, the numbers indicate that many people held off making their holiday alcohol purchases in anticipation of the tax break which came into effect on December 14.

Keating says in the week leading up to the Friday, “we were actually 16 per cent below what we were a year ago. It really looked like people were delaying their purchases.” In the meantime says Keating on that Saturday “our sales were up almost 38 per cent, just for that one day.”

In the meantime, the overall effect on alcohol sales have been “much more modest” over the last month according to Keating.

They tried to isolate what they believe is attributable to the HST holiday itself and Keating says “it looks like it’s about maybe 1.6 per cent higher than what we would have expected to see.”