Monthly imports of premium cigars, compared to last year, were down in July for the third month, but how far? More than indicated by the numbers, according the Cigar Association of America (CAA). The uncertainty is due to a shift by General Cigar Co. of the production of machine-made cigars to the Dominican Republic. "This has the effect of overstating premium cigar imports," the CAA advised in its monthly import-export report.

The reason has to do with cost. According to CAA executive director Norman Sharp, any cigar imported to the United States is considered a premium cigar by the Foreign Trade Division of the U.S. Bureau of the Census if its export value is more than 23 cents. And since sometime in 1997, as General shifted machine-made production from the United States to the Dominican Republic, many machine-made cigars imported from the Dominican Republic have been tallied as premiums, Sharp said. There is no way to break out the machine-made numbers unless federal officials change their policy, he added.

The CAA's July report said that premium cigar imports to the United States for July totaled 42.7 million cigars, a 11.2 percent decrease from a year earlier. A decline in May of 17.7 percent marked the first monthly decrease since November 1994. Year-to-date imports through July still increased 2.6 percent over 1997 to 259.4 million and already represent nearly 98 million more cigars than imported by the U.S. in all of 1995.

Decreases in imports for May, June, and July were reported from the Canary Islands, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, and the Philippine Republic. Most of the annual increase has been posted by the Dominican Republican, which shipped 164.9 million cigars to the U.S. through June, compared to 135.5 million during the first seven months of 1997. An unspecified number were machine-made.