Zonal retailers surrendering licence over unviable business

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In accordance with industrial sources, retailers who have submitted their licenses mostly blame some obstacles in new liquor policies, including setting arbitrary prices, for their business inability.

Many luxury areas in the national capital now without a liquor shop with South Delhi are the worst by the lack of liquor.

Obstacles in new policies and wrong implementation have caused outlets to be closed throughout the city. Areas like Cannaught Place, Saket, Green Park and other Pasrt in South Delhi face the liquor crisis, said a source from the industry.

Even though the policy is good, there is an error at the level of implementation that causes this sad situation,” said Vinod Giri, Director General of the Indian Alcoholic Beverage Company (CIBC).

Underline mistakes, he said that the number of shops in each zone is high. The policy allows 27 vending of liquor in each of 32 zones, which is unfair, said Giri.

Second, he said the bidding policy also caused heavy financial burdens to the shop owner because of the higher number of stores, it was not proven to be profitable.

With an average backup price around RS 225 Crore per zone, the price of reserves for this zone was added to almost 7,000 crores. However, the Delhi government gets around RS 9,000 Crore through competitive offerings.

Speaking of new excise policies, Giri said that apart from these obstacles, another important factor was a protest performed by the opposition at the time of the program launch.

Because of protests in several places throughout the city, the launch of the scheme is slow, and also the vendors face losses because they have taken their licenses through the bidding process.

Because the new excise verification process added by the government to existing rules, the vendor must bear more losses because it delays the opening of liquor outlets,” said Giri.

He added that the ongoing discount for the sale of liquor was the result of this delay, which ultimately caused a large loss to the vendors after that they chose to hand over their licenses.