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Boby Kurian

BANGALORE, April 14

BARRING Andhra Pradesh, the growth of beer sales in the rest of the southern States remained sedate during the financial year 2002-03.

This comes at a time when the overall beer consumption in the country reportedly moved up 12 per cent during the last financial year. Traditionally, the southern markets account for bulk of the domestic beer sales, as business remains unaffected by seasonal factors like in the north.

While sales in Andhra Pradesh jumped 27 per cent to touch 15.5 million cases from 12.2 million cases, it remained stagnant in the neighbouring Karnataka with volumes hovering around six million cases. In 2001-02, Karnataka reported beer sales of 6.24 million cases. But clearly Tamil Nadu was the worst hit among the southern states. According to industry estimates, beer sales in Tamil Nadu, the third largest guzzler after Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, dropped 15 per cent from approximately 11.6 million cases in 2001-2002. The relatively smaller Kerala market saw sales touch three million cases, up from 2.86 million cases in the previous year.

Tamil Nadu, which registered a drop of 13 per cent in the April-December period of the last year, saw the sales plummeting about 27 per cent — from 11.33 lakh cases to 8.23 lakh cases -- in the month of March. This, the industry observers said, would have taken the beer sales in the State down by at least 15 per cent. The de-growth in Tamil Nadu has been attributed to that State's recent experiments with cheap Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) and the stand off between the trade and the Government. Karnataka's woes remained the same — proliferation of the cheap `seconds' liquor resulting from the large-scale excise evasion. The efforts made by the beer companies to popularise 330 ml at a competitive price cannibalised on the 650 ml segment leading to a net drop in consumption, observers added.

The Kerala market, which has seen a rough phase since 1995-96 when sales peaked at 3.21 million cases, showed signs of recovery with sales reportedly hitting the three million mark once again. The observers have attributed this to the emergence of a growing urban youth market mainly on account of the development in IT-enabled services at centres like Kochi. It is left to be seen whether the State, which witnessed sporadic growth over the last on decade, can sustain the momentum and a lot depends on its volatile excise regime.

The rather indifferent market conditions in South -- with the exception of Andhra Pradesh -- suggests that national beer sales this year might have been propped up by the buoyancy in the northern belt covering States such as Rajasthan, Punjab and Delhi, all of which saw a robust double digit growth on a smaller base though. The observers said the sales growth witnessed in these markets were helped by an extended summer and the growing urbanisation which theoretically supports beer consumption. It is estimated that the domestic beer sales touched 82 million cases in 2002-03, up from 72 million in the previous year.

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