Hyderabad: The state government in a meeting of excise department officials on November 6, took a decision to set up 350 new wine shops across the state. Currently, there are 2,216 liquor shops in the state and Rs 1,200 crore of revenue is being generated for the same.
The excise commissioner Sarfaraz Ahmed said the new excise licensing period for 2021-23 will come into force from December 1, and the shops will be increased in areas that reported high sales in the just concluded license period from November 1, 2019, to October 31, 2021. The licence for these two years was extended till this month end to compensate for the loss of business owing to lockdown in 2020 and 2021, he added.
According to the government order, the allocation of the wine shop has 10 per cent reservation for scheduled castes (SC), five per cent reservation for scheduled tribes (ST) and 15 per cent reservation for the Goud community.
The non-refundable licence fee for each application is Rs 2 lakh, while the retail excise tax will be the same as the previous licence period. Also, the yearly special retail excise tax per annum will be Rs 5 lakh. Applicants can make payments in six instalments instead of four, in which payments must be done every two months.
The successful applicants will have to submit only one bank guarantee equal to 25% of the annual license fee for a period of 25 months. Earlier, they furnished two bank guarantees for four instalments of the annual license fee.
Applications will be accepted from the 9 to 18 of this month and draws will be conducted on the 20 and provisional licenses will be issued on the same day. The new shops will come into effect from December 1.