Comments
Telangana’s Excise Department has earned Rs 900 crore in lieu of non-refundable application fee for liquour licences.
As per the existing liquor policy, the State Government issues liquor licences for shops to sell liquor for a period of two years. The current licence validity expires on October 18 and new licences for shops are scheduled to come up from November 1. The deadline for applying for new shops ended on Wednesday.
“The increased consumption of liquor has obviously driven the increase in interest in the liquor business which is reflecting in the number of applications as well as fee collected,” an official of Excise Department told BusinessLine.
The fee, collected this year, more than doubled at Rs 900 crore as against Rs 400 crore collected as application fee in 2017. The application fee is Rs 2 lakh. The department has received 45,000 applications for 2,216 shops across the state.
The state has been witnessing a steady increase in demand for liquor. According to industry estimates, total liquor sales in Telangana was to the tune of about 2.8 crore cases of liquor and 3.8 crore cartons of beer during last year. In monetary terms, this could be around Rs 18000 crore. One case of liquor contains 8.64 litres of alcohol and one carton of beer contains 7.8 litres of alcohol.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.