Despite lower sales in terms of volume and COVID-19 pandemic related restrictions, the excise revenue has reported a 7% increase over the previous fiscal, and has exceeded the budgetary targets. Two excise duty hikes that had been effected for the financial year have helped cope with the anticipated revenue shortfalls owing to the pandemic.
As against the budgetary target of revenue collection of ₹22,700 crore for the financial year 2020-2021, revenue of ₹23,131 crore has been collected.
This is about ₹1,547 crore increase over 2019-2020, when ₹21,583 crore was collected.
The increased revenue has come at a time when sales of Indian Made Liquor (IML) and beer fell in the year during which the lockdown had resulted in shutdown of liquor vending outlets for about two months, while bars were closed for over four months.
The excise duty, liquor industry sources said, had been increased by more than 20% cumulatively this year. If one excise duty hike was announced in the Budget, the second hike came in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as the State stared at a revenue shortfall. The officials had estimated that the second excise duty hike alone would fetch over ₹2,000 crore.
This move, however, was resented by the industry. “As government anticipated, revenue increased. As the industry anticipated, the sales declined,” sources said.
The data released by the Excise Department on Thursday reveal that while nearly 601 lakh carton boxes of IML was sold in 2019-2020, it declined by about 2.8% to 583 lakh carton boxes. Similarly, the volume of beer sales declined by 17 %. As against the sale of 289 lakh carton boxes of beer in 2019-2020, just about 237.82 lakh carton boxes were sold in the pandemic year.
Till November, the excise collection from liquor sale had been in the negative compared to the last fiscal, and started showing positive growth since then.
