Hyderabad: The state government is expecting more earnings through the sale of liquor in the next two years, when the excise policy for 2019-21 ends in October.
The new draft policy for 2021-23 seeks to steeply increase the application fee and the licence fee to set up liquor shops, sources said.
The application fee for setting up liquor shops was Rs 50,000 in 2015-17, which was doubled to Rs 1 lakh in 2017-19 and again doubled to Rs 2 lakh during 2019-21.
Now, it is being proposed to increase the fee to either Rs 3 lakh or Rs 4 lakh, as doubling of application fees earlier did not deter applicants from rushing in to set up liquor shops.
When the government invited applications to set up 2,216 liquor shops for 2019-21, it received a record 48,401 applications, though the fee was non-refundable.
The government earned Rs 44.32 crore through application fee alone, and another Rs 968 crore through licence fee.
Liquor remains the major revenue source for the government after GST and VAT.
In the first year of state formation in 2014-15, the government earned Rs 10,883 crore from liquor. This increased sharply year after year, going up 2.5 times to reach Rs 27,288 crore in 2020-21.
In the first four months of 2021-22, from April to July, liquor sales earned Rs 9,509 crore for the government which is a new high.
