VIJAYAWADA: With the dealers of wine shops insisting on enhancing their commission citing losses and the Excise officials opposing the same on the grounds that the dealers are earning more revenue after the government slashing the licence fee, the issue went to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who is learnt to have directed the officials of Excise department to conduct a detailed study on the liquor business in the neighbouring States and submit a report whether to increase the commission or not.
Demanding to increase trade margin on sale of liquor to 18 per cent from the existing 9 per cent, AP State Wine Dealers Association (APSWDA) organised a ‘no purchase’ protest for some days in the last week of April and withdrew it following the government assuring to look into the issue. However, with there was no progress for the last three months, the APSWDA once again took up to the notice of Excise Minister KS Jawahar.
After going through the report of the Excise officials that there is no need to enhance the commission of dealers, the Chief Minister, however, instructed them to inquire about licensee fee being collected in other States and the commission being given to dealers so as to take a decision accordingly.Speaking to TNIE, an official of the Excise department said that they are collecting the details from the neighbouring States. “As we have decreased the license fee of A4 shops by 75 per cent, there are no chances of wine shop owners suffering losses,” the official said adding that they will make a study on license fee and trade margin in Telangana and Karnataka.
“As the government itself is conducting liquor sale in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, there is no need to collect details from those States,” the official said. Stating that the government has lost around Rs 1,500 crore after reducing the licence fee of A4 shops by 75 per cent in the excise year which commenced from July, 2017, the official said they came up with the idea of imposing Additional Excise Duty (AED) to overcome the income lost on reduction of licence fee and reduced the margin on sale to liquor shop owners. Despite reducing the margin, the official claims that merchants are getting good profits following the reduction in licence fee and the government’s strong action against belt shops.
Contrary to the claim of excise officials, APSWDA president Rayala Subba Rao said suicide of a liquor merchant in Nellore district and death of another merchant in Chittoor district were indication to the huge losses being faced by wine shop dealers.“If we are getting profits, what is need for us to shutdown our business?’’ he questioned.
Stating that a petition filed by them against reduction of trade margin is pending with the High Court, he said in case of getting a favourable verdict, the government will have to pay Rs 1,800 crore to wine dealers per year and Rs 3,600 crore for two years.
“We approached the court citing that there was no mention about reducing trade margin when the notification issued for allocation of wine shops and it was reduced from the existing 21 per cent to 9 per cent three months after the notification,” he said, exuding confidence of winning the case.