In the new excise policy of UT Chandigarh for year 2015-16, high-end brands of Indian Made Foreign liquor (IMFl) and beer will become costly by at least 15 per cent as compared to the last year. The new policy to be implemented after fresh auction after April 15. Although excise department claimed that it was not imposing extra taxes or excise duty this time, yet it targeted Rs135 crore revenue from the new excise policy against Rs121 crore in the excise policy of 2014-15.
In a departure from last year when 173 IMFl and country vends were sold separately, both the categories have now been merged together, bringing down the count to 100 units, each unit having 2-5 liquor vends. As per the new excise policy, there will be a total of 100 liquor shops in the city. In the exercise to rationalize the reserved fee, the reserved price of the high-demand units had been increased, and those less in demand, had been decreased within each group. “In case a licensee is not able to run a unit, he can transfer it to another person by paying a certain fee,” said an excise official.
Each licensing unit will comprise a country liquor vend and one Indian made foreign liquor vend under one roof. There will be 48 groups across the city. Administration reserved the prices of these groups which starts from up to Rs60 lakh to above six crore categories. Besides this Chandigarh administration also for the first time introduced ‘Microbrewery Projects’ in this policy. Department says that to shift people from hard liquor to liquor with low alcoholic content, a license in form l-10C may be granted for retail sale of beer to be manufactured by ‘Microbrewery Projects’.
Government also decided to grant additional godowns at the cost of extra fee of Rs2.5 lakh per annum with in the vicinity of an existing vend this time. It also made it clear that no liquor or beer would be sold under the kutcha shed; it would remain under the pucca SCOs, SCFs, Booths etc.