Survey on Excise duty Labels/ Stamps - 4

Part-4

Written  by :  N.R. Jayaraman

Madhya Pradesh

The Madhya Pradesh Excise duty Labels/ Stamps are affixed on all the bottles on the neck with a showing 'MP Excise' on each label. The Excise Labels are issued  from the Gwalior branch of the department. The production cost per label is stated to be around 7-8 paisa as per the officials. We were unable  to get the required data in all completeness.  Two figures were made available to us. One in respect of total quantity manufactured per year and another, year wise  consumption of Liquor during the corresponding year, both of which were not matching with each other. Therefore both the figures though not matching with each other were taken up for calculating the Excise duty Label requirement.  The production showed an upward trend of 32 %  and also the consumption  45 % upwards. Both the figures were in lakh bottles.  Whether sold or not, each bottle manufactured need to be regularized by affixing  Excise duty stamp.  Therefore we concluded that the average requirement of Excise duty Label based on the Production figure per month could be around 11 crore labels.  We could not get official Excise duty Label sample and therefore copied it from the bottle.  This prevented us from knowing what security features were embedded in it except to notice it to be Holographic in nature.


 Excise duty Specimen - on bottle


End Note :-    Based on the introduction of Hologram seal called HEAL (holographic excise adhesive label) introduced by the Tamilnadu Excise department, MP Govt Excise department too introduced it for affixing on the Liquor Bottles as Excise duty Label.  As per a research paper it is understood  that from the year 2007 the MP govt started procuring  Heal Labels and till  2011 the Govt has procured 72 crore of  Heal Labels for the said purpose. These labels made the Counterfeiting almost impossible as they would shred to pieces once removed from the bottle. They are also not copyable as those HEAL Labels are customized with overt and covert features.

Rajasthan

In Rajasthan Holographic Excise Labels are affixed on bottles. However in the case of Beer the Excise Label is affixed only on the case (containing 12 bottles) and not on individual bottles. Only from the year 2009- 2010 affixing the Excise duty Labels were made compulsory for Country made Liquors too. Here too the production cost per label is stated to be around 8-8.5 paisa as per the officials.
While Rajasthan Govt's  revenue from liquor in terms of money  jumped by 38 %, the hard  liquor consumption in the state declined by 56 % from 2004 till 2006-07 because of the pro-beer policy. Beer consumption saw an upswing in the state by 83 %. This thus was an encouraging news to the Excise duty Label  suppliers as loss at one end was covered by the other.  Only consumption data  of Rajasthan was available to work  out the Excise duty Label requirement as given below.  
 

Rajasthan Excise duty Label specimen- Holographic Label

 

End Note : - According to one report the requirement reportedly leaped to  25.30 crore bottles per month in the year 2011-2012  thus placing the requirement of the Excise duty Label per month as  16.75 crore Labels . The details are:-

..........to be continued