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The Delhi government will come up with the Delhi Excise Policy 2022-23 in the next two months, which will be a revised form of the existing policy, senior officials privy to the development said on Monday. It is also likely that the government will once again allow discounts on the retail sale of liquor, but with multiple caveats.
As the revised excise policy will take at least two months to be notified, the excise department, in the meantime, has extended the liquor trade licences of all private vends till May 31.
To be sure, the rules mandate that a new excise policy is notified every year at the start of the financial year. In the past, the same excise policy was notified every year without any reforms. It was only last year that the entire excise regime of Delhi was restructured with zones redefined, taxes subsumed into one upfront charge and tighter rules brought in to improve the buying experience of consumers.
“The new policy will not be anything drastically different from the current one. But, it is going to address all the problems that were identified in the 2021-22 excise policy, which came into effect from November 16 last year,” said one excise official, requesting anonymity.
The official, as also a second senior official, hinted that discounts may see a comeback in Delhi. But, this time, it will be highly regulated and the rules will be nuanced.
Apart from that, the excise department is also working on simplifying the process of procurement of liquor for restaurants, bars and clubs as under the new regime, they have to procure all their stocks from retailers only and not wholesalers.
The upcoming policy will also have more details on the procurement of imported and draught beer as several restauranteurs had complained about the same.
For example, draught beer, which requires the utmost care in handling, and is only meant for ”on premise” consumption, cannot be procured from retail liquor vends. The reason is that retail shops are small and can’t handle 30 or 50 litre kegs, CO2 cylinders, and the logistics for returning the kegs, etc. Across India, wherever there is bottle/can supplies of beer from retail, draught beer is directly sourced from brewery or wholesale. Issues such as these also are likely to be resolved in the upcoming policy.
On February 28, the Delhi government ordered the discontinuation of all discounts and offers on the retail sale of liquor saying it was leading to overcrowding in and around shops, which were causing “law and order” problems, and also because licensees were resorting to “unhealthy market practices”.
HT spoke to a large number of consumers over the past one month, and a majority of them said the decision to revoke discounts was “knee-jerk” and the government could have issued tighter regulations instead of ordering a blanket ban on discounts.
The government, on March 4, told the Delhi high court that owing to the heavy discounts and offers, 24.5 million litres of liquor was sold in Delhi in February, almost double the average monthly sale of 13.2 million litres in 2019-20.
“The intention of the government with regard to discounting was to promote consumer choice and healthy competition and determination of price by market forces. The discounting of the nature that we saw in February was not the objective of the government. So, we are now exploring how discounts can be offered without the city being turned into a liquor capital,” said a second official, requesting anonymity.
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