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Chandigarh to consult stakeholders for next year’s excise policy
Chandigarh excise and taxation department has now invited suggestions from stakeholders to be submitted by November 30
With Chandigarh’s excise and taxation policy proving a damp squib for 2023-24, the department has initiated the process of preparing the new excise policy 2024-25, which will be implemented from April 1 next year.
The excise and taxation department has now invited suggestions from stakeholders to be submitted by November 30.
For the first time, the department suffered a loss of nearly ₹150 crore this financial year after 18 of its liquor vends found no takers in the 20 e-auctions held in the past nine months.
A senior officer of the department said, “This time we have started the process a little early as we have suffered a huge financial loss this year. We have now sought suggestions from the stakeholders, which we will incorporate into our policy.”
“Due to the excise policy of Punjab, we suffered a loss,” he added.
Out of a total of 95 liquor vends, 18 went unsold, following which the department increased the liquor quota of existing liquor vends for the remaining months.
For the financial year 2023-24, the department had established a revenue target of ₹830 crore from liquor vend licence fees. However, only ₹600 crore has been collected so far.
The revenue was to come in the form of licence fees for these vends. The fee ranges from ₹3 crore to ₹15 crore depending upon the location of the vend.
Darshan Singh Kler, president of the wine contractor association, who bought six liquor vends for this year in an auction held on March 15, said due to their own faulty excise policy, they are burdening the existing liquor vend owners by increasing the quota. Now, they have sought suggestions from the stakeholders for the 2024-25 policy.
Notably, UT consistently underperforms each year. Liquor contractors attribute this to an imbalanced tax structure in comparison to neighbouring cities in Punjab. While officials acknowledge this discrepancy, the department has failed to address the issue. Last year, three out of the 96 vends on offer remained unsold. During the 2022-23 period, the UT excise and taxation department managed to sell 93 out of a total of 96 liquor vends across seven auctions.
