GREATER NOIDA: The excise department, which rolled out the process of licence renewal for the over 500 liquor vends in Gautam Budh Nagar on Saturday, is set to implement a host of new measures under the state government’s latest excise policy aimed at creating “virtual perimeters” around such shops from April 1.
Under it, all 532 liquor vends across the district, will have to install closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and install a track-and-trace system, including keeping point-of-sale(POS) machines and QR code scanners, to upload the details of the stock sold per day on a centralised system, officials said.
The process of “geo-fencing” the shops selling country-made liquor (231), foreign liquor (139), beer shops (137) and model shops (25) in the district aims at enhancing transparency, stemming illicit sale and tracking the demand and supply in the region, the department said.
Officials, meanwhile, told TOI that they have already achieved Rs 916 crore of the Rs 1,044-crore target till December 31 last year. “The renewal of shops, which will continue till March 9, will further bring in revenue for us in the coming weeks,” district excise officer RB Singh said, adding that the department was looking to raise more than Rs 118 crore through licence fees. Till December 31 last year, the revenue of the department was 38% higher compared to the previous fiscal, the official said.
While the excise policy for the 2022-23 fiscal remains largely unchanged, entrepreneurs who entered the premium retail business have expressed apprehension over the hike in annual licence fees for such vends from Rs 12 lakh Rs 20 lakh.
Shiva Kaushik, a co-partner of a store at Sector 74’s Supertech North Eye, said, “We are going to get the licence again. Even though our margin will come down and it will be difficult to break even, our customer base has grown significantly and we will be able to cover up in some time.”
