It’s a small high in Karnataka’s excise revenues

BENGALURU: The State Excise revenue for the current financial year has gone up marginally compared to the last FY, even though there is a steep decline in the sale of Indian Made Liquor (IML) and beer. The revenue collection between April 2020 and January 2021 shows a gain of 3.38 per cent, compared to the corresponding period in the last fiscal.

According to department statistics, between April last year and January 31, the revenue collection was Rs 18,689.76 crore, as against Rs 18,078.92 crore during the previous FY, showing an increase of Rs 610.84 crore this fiscal.

The revenue target for 2020-‘21 was Rs 22,700 crore. It was Rs 20,950 crore for the previous year. As regards a slump in the sale of IML and beer, the state charts show that the Karnataka State Beverage Corporation Limited (KSBCL) had sold 509.19 lakh case boxes (CBs) of IML in 2019-20, while it sold only 472.69 lakh CBs in 2020-21.

Beer sales have seen a steeper decline in the current fiscal with only 180.16 lakh CBs being sold in 2020-21, as against 241.78 lakh CBs in the previous year, registering a -25.49 per cent decline in the current fiscal, as compared to the previous FY. One CB contains 8.64 litres of alcohol.

The reason in increase in excise revenue is largely the steep hike in the Additional Excise Duty (AED) on all slabs of IML in May last year, soon after the government allowed the reopening of CL2 (retail liquor stores) and MSIL stores to mop up the additional Rs 2,500 crore revenue.

All liquor outlets were closed during the first lockdown between March 25 and May 7, 2020 and excise revenue had taken a big hit. It was only in the third quarter of 2020-21 that the department’s revenue collection at Rs 16,405 crore had surpassed the mop-up of Rs 16,218 crore during the corresponding period in 2019-20.