Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Haryana Govt announces new Excise Policy


CHANDIGARH, MARCH 4
The Haryana Government today announced its Excise Policy for the financial year 2015-16.
             The new Excise Policy, which will be for one year has been approved in the meeting of State Cabinet held under the Chairmanship of Chief Minister Mr Manohar Lal here today.
             In the new Policy, it has been decided to retain the maximum basic quota of country liquor (CL) at 900 lakh proof litre (PL) and Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) at 500 lakh PL. However, the maximum number of retail outlets has been kept at the same level of 3500 as in the year 2014-15. For the purpose of allotment, the vends will be clubbed into groups comprising of a maximum number of three vends of either country liquor or IMFL.  Apart from this, E-tendering has been introduced for the first time for allotment of retail outlets. No vends would be allowed in the villages where Kanya Gurukul were situated.
            While the participation fee for the bidders has been reduced from Rs. 25,000  per vend to Rs. 10,000 per vend to encourage participation, the percentage of fixed quota of CL has been enhanced from 25 per cent to 40 per cent to be equally divided amongst all the distilleries.
Wholesale license of country liquor (L-13) will be granted both to retail licensees as well as the distilleries. In the case of wholesale license of IMFL (L-1), the licenses will be granted to the retail licensees giving maximum revenue.
             In the new Excise Policy, minimum retail sale price of liquor has been marginally increased and rationalized while the import duty on alcohol to be used for industrial purposes has been reduced from Rs. 6 per PL to Rs. 3 per PL.  The Excise and Taxation Department will hire some locations for setting up of liquor vends having high revenue potential in Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) areas and Haryana tourist complexes for which the rent will be paid by the Department.
             The license fee of the distilleries has been rationalized by linking the same to their installed capacities. Online system of issuance of permits and passes from distilleries is being developed which will be introduced during 2015-16. Also, a new concept of Modern shops is being introduced to cater to the demand of urban consumers. Rate of VAT on liquor has been enhanced from 4 per cent to 8 per cent with surcharge.
            In order to streamline the bidding process and to make it more transparent, the Department has decided to introduce e-Tendering for allotting the liquor vends under the Excise Policy 2015-16. Under the e-Tendering, prospective licensees have to sign up themselves on the Department Portal (www.haryanatax.com) and obtain computer generated ID and Password. Licensees have to register themselves for submitting the bids for each district by creating corpus of EMD and participation fees.
 On receiving the Registration ID, the Licensee will be able to submit the bid online. The bid amount and the group will remain secret and will not be accessible even to the Departmental Users. The details of the bids will only be accessible on the date and time fixed for evaluation of the bids by the Committee headed by the Deputy Commissioner of the district concerned, in the presence of the bidders.
       There will be no negotiations and the highest bidder of each group will be declared successful. In case of a tie among the highest bidders, the successful bidder will be decided by draw of lots.

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