Liquor Sale Yet To Begin In Andhra
Even twenty-four hours after the Andhra High Court cleared the public sale and consumption of India made foreign liquor (IMFL) in the state, the commodity failed to appear in the retail outlets yesterday largely due to mismanagement on the part of the State Breweries Corporation which enjoys monopoly over wholesale distribution.
The State Breweries Corporation yesterday morning asked the retailers to lift stocks, but the latter refused on the ground that they were neither being supplied the required brands nor the ordered quantity.
The corporation has a stock of 25,000 cases of the not-so-popular brands of IMFL, stored some 28 months ago when there was no prohibition.
It had planned to distribute this stock among the 132 retail outlets licensed for the city and the 104 outlets licensed for the Ranga Reddy district.
The retailers said that the stock being distributed by the corporation, which included the old unpopular stock, would be insufficient to handle the demand.
They told the corporation that it should stock itself adequately before beginning distribution among the retail outlets as per the requirement of each shop. Since the quota is not fixed, retailers should be allowed to draw the desired quantity, the retailers said.
Senior executives of the corporation were huddled together for almost the whole day trying to persuade retailers to lift what was being offered, promising that supplies would be streamlined within four days. The retailers, however, remained adamant.
Andhra Pradesh Breweries Corporation managing director V Nagi Reddy said that the corporation has arranged for fresh stocks (27,000 cases) from outside the state. The consignment was expected to arrive yesterday night.
In a move to reopen the 32 distilleries in the state, they have been given licence to start manufacture of liquor, Reddy told Business Standard.
He said the corporation had placed orders on more than 100 distilleries in different part of the country a fortnight ago. But the stocks could not enter the state as the case questioning the validity of relaxing prohibition in the state was still before the High Court. Now that the court has upheld the government action, stocks will start flowing in, he added.
The corporation chief was confident that supplies would be streamlined in four or five days once stocks start pouring in and the local distilleries go operational.
He said that the absence of the chief minister and the prohibition and excise minister had compounded the problem as officials were in a fix on how to go about distributing the little available stock.
Meanwhile, retailers too are facing the problem of determining the retail price of the liquor supplied to them.
The corporation, which has fixed the wholesale price, does not want to lay down the retail minimum or maximum price. It wants individual retail shop to fix prices as per their convenience.
The corporation has also made public its wholesale price for the different brands. For example, a case (of 12 bottles) of the premium whisky will be supplied to the retailer for Rs 4,745. Kingfisher beer from breweries in Hyderabad will cost Rs 320, while the same from a Mumbai brewery will cost Rs 340.
With the wholesale rates being fixed, retailers feel they cannot overcharge consumers. At the same time they will have to get back their investment, both by way of setting up the outlets and also the bid money they had paid. Before prohibition was clamped, the consumption in the state was 800,000 cases of IMFL and 600,000 cases of beer per month.