THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: After the launch of the BevQ app facilitated the reopening of liquor outlets, including bars and beer parlours offering parcel service, consumers bought liquor to the tune of around Rs 750 crore in the first 15 days.
Despite hiccups in the functioning of the virtual queue management app, the reopening of outlets after more than two months spread cheer among liquor consumers. But if the statistics obtained by TNIE are any indication, Bevco outlets have now clocked only half of its business before the Covid-19 outbreak.
From May 28 to June 15 (15 working days), the state recorded liquor sales of around Rs 750 crore in 1,168 outlets.
This comprised 301 outlets controlled by Bevco and Consumerfed, and 867 outlets in the private sector. The Kerala State Beverages Corporation (Bevco) outlets received around Rs 250 crore while bars, beer and wine parlours, KTDC beer parlours and Consumerfed outlets made around Rs 500 crore. Before the lockdown set in, Bevco used to get a revenue of around Rs 38-43 crore per day, with retail outlets netting around Rs 28-30 crore and sales in warehouses fetching around
Rs 10-13 crore. During festival days, sales would go over Rs 45 crore. Revenue remains poor despite the state government raising sales tax on hard liquor by up to 35 per cent to mop up additional revenue to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The taxes and margins on IMFL in the state is around 240 per cent now. The virtual app generated around 45 lakh tokens for liquor sale over the past 15 days. While Bevco outlets received around 13 lakh tokens, bars, beer parlours and Consumerfed outlets netted the lion's share of the tokens.
Bars and beer parlours ate into Bevco outlets’ share, says MD
The excise department has handed over Rs 650 crore from the liquor sales proceeds to the state government. Bevco managing director G Sparjan Kumar told TNIE that bars and beer parlours selling liquor at retail rates is a major reason for drop in sales at Bevco outlets.
“It is true that sales have not been in tune with the prime days. While only Bevco outlets sold liquor at retail rates before the lockdown, now bars and beer parlours too are selling liquor at retail rates. If around 6-7 lakh consumers visited liquor outlets earlier, the number has now declined to around 3 lakh due to various reasons.
The absence of a thriving migrant population in outlets and other economic factors also contributed to the dip in sales,” he said. The new system allows a user to buy liquor only once in four days. Further, the peak business hours at liquor outlets are between 5pm and 9pm. But under the current system, the outlets start at 9am and close at 5pm. This has also led to the poor performance of Bevco outlets, officials said. Tokens are distributed equally to various outlets, including bars, to avoid crowding and to ensure social distancing in this extraordinary situation, officials said.