Seven shopping malls in three cities likely to get permit to sell liquor
District collector N. Yuvraj monitors the scrutiny rpocedure during the auctions for liquor shops at DLB Kalyana Mandapam in Visakhapatnam on Monday. (Photo: DC)
Visakhapatnam: The annual bar licencing policy to be unveiled by the state government in a few days is likely to throw up some major changes, including the licence fee and also include the tourism policy to attract guests. There are about 800 bar-restaurants in Andhra Pradesh. But, over only 200 bars, including star hotels and others of them were with a swanky facelift.
Speaking to this correspondent, commissioner of prohibition and excise I. Srinivas Sri Naresh said that in Andhra Pradesh there are around 800 bar and restaurants. But, liquor consumers were not happy with the services of most of the bars in the state. Though the bars are charging more for serving liquor, the ambience and facilities are not up to the expectations of the consumers. The new licence policy will mainly focus on improving services in the bars and also to tie up the tourism department and their policy to attract more consumers.
Sources said that a few new bars are likely to be sanctioned at the tourist attractions only and not in other places as the strength of the bars was more than required at other places and in cities like Vizag, Guntur and Vijaywada there are more number of bars than shops.
The licence fee for the bars is Rs 41 lakh a year in cities like Vizag, Vijayawada and Tirupati where population is between 5 lakh and 20 lakh. The hotel industry in Vizag has been requesting the excise officials to decrease the annual bar fee citing liquor sales in the bar of star hotels was less than when compared to other bars.
The licence fee for the bars is likely to slightly be decreased to encourage more hotels to serve liquor.
Liquor outlets are all set to open sales in seven big shopping malls in three cities of Vizag, Vijayawada and Tirupati in the state as the liquor policy for 2015-2017 will allow shopping malls which were spread in minimum of 10,000 sft. The excise commissioner said that three malls in Vizag, two malls in Vijayawada and two from Tirupate had talks with the excise department to start liquor outlets in their malls.
The liquor outlet in the malls will also sell the spirit at Maximum Retail Price only and consumers can purchase liquor in the AC malls, he added. Mr Srinivas Sri Naresh said as a pilot project, the excise department was chalking out plans to develop the micro-breweries in Vizag city, which has been developing leaps and bounds that will have licence to brew their own beer in different falvours. Later, the micro-brewers will come up in other big cities in the state. Micro-breweries concept is catching up across the country, he added.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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