Demonetisation effect dips liquor sales

Hyderabad: Demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes seems to be helping the Modi government in realisng the dream of Bapu to make India alcohol-free at least partially.

Guzzlers, who have been helping the Telangana government set a new excise revenue record by earning Rs 12,143.88 crore in financial year 2015-2016, which was a growth of 18.61 per cent compared to 2014-15, seem to have cut down on their liquor consumption after November 8 when demonetisation was announced.

According to B Venkateswar Rao, president of Telangana Wine Dealers’ Association, there has been 30 percent dip in the sales of liquor after the demonetisation of high-value currency notes had come into effect.

With non-availability of cash, people are rarely turning up at the wine shops and bars for liquor. “The industry has started feeling the pinch of the losses,” he said.

The liquor retailers were expecting some improvement during first week of December when employees get their salaries but not many have been buying liquor.

The government’s latest decision to ‘rationalise’ the rates of various brands of liquor is likely to result in a further dip in sales by about additional 5 percent, said Venkateswar Rao.

Justifying the rationalisation, the Excise department said that it was the retailers’ association which had time and again represented to round off the maximum retail price from Rs 5 to next higher price as they were facing serious problems in obtaining coins and were unable to return the change to the customers.

The department had also received number of complaints from the customers on non-returning of change by the retailers.

Hence the department has decided to round off the MRP of the brands which are in the range of Rs 75, Rs 85, Rs 145 and Rs 215.

These brands have a market share of over 50 percent of total consumption in liquor, officials told The Hans India.

However, the MRP of very high premium brands which have a market share of just 25 percent have been hiked by Rs 30 to Rs 40 for 180 ml bottles and the government expects to realise additional revenue to the tune of Rs 50 crore per month after rationalisation provided there was no dip in the sales trend.

The sources said that the government had anticipated revenue of about Rs 11,500 crore during the current financial year.

Till October excise revenue was around Rs 1,015 crore but after demonetisation on November 8 it came down to Rs 702 crore.