Tasmac liquor sales touched Rs 44,000 crore in 2022-23

CHENNAI: The policy note, which was tabled by State Minister for Electricity, Prohibition and Excise V Senthilbalaji, said total liquor sales in 2022-2023 has touched Rs 44,098.56 crore compared to last year's figure of Rs 36,050.65 crore, registering a wooping of 22.3% increase in total revenue.

Interestingly, even during pandemic lockdown liquor sales did not decrease. Accordingly, in 2019-2020 (pre-pandemic situation), the sales in the State was at Rs 33,133.24 crore.

However, during the pandemic when the liquor shops were closed for a period of time, the revenue in 2020-2021 was Rs 33,811.15 crore, an increase of 2.04%.

A senior official from Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac), the monopoly agency to sell liquor in the State, seeking anonymity, said during the lockdown period apart from closing the shops, the timing of functioning of liquor shops were also shortened according to the region. "Otherwise the liquor sales would have touched Rs 35,000 crore in 2020-2021 itself,” he added.

The Tasmac official also atrributed the increase in revenue to increase in the liquor prices in May 2020. "The liquor prices were hiked by a maximum of Rs 20,” he said adding the liquor sales were also increased due to the introduction new liquor brands, which was raised to 553.

The official said the introduction of Point of Sale machines (POS) machines too made the revenue to increase through liquor sales. "Now-a-days, more consumers have started to use debit and credit cards to purchase liquor,” he said.