27% of the revenue generated by Tamil Nadu in 2012-13 came from the sale of alcohol. It includes an excise revenue of Rs 12,125.31 crore and sales tax of Rs 9,555.36 crore.
The Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) is a company owned by the Government of Tamil Nadu, which has a monopoly over wholesale and retail vending of alcoholic beverages in the state. Originally established in 1983 for wholesale vending of alcohol in the state, TASMAC became the sole vendor of alcohol in the state in October 2003. Since then, the revenue has grown approximately 10 fold.
Recently a couple of articles appeared in the media talking about the skyrocketing turnover of TASMAC. I was intrigued to see how much of the revenue generated by the state comes from TASMAC.
Like any other state in India, Tamilnadu has 4 sources of revenue (1) State’s Own tax revenue (2) Non Tax Revenue from the state (3) Share of Central Taxes and (4) Grants in Aid from the central government.
For calculation purposes, I have just taken the revenue generated within the state (state revenue – central funds) and looked at the last 5 years’ data.
State Revenue has gone up from Rs. 39396.7 crores to Rs. 80248.52 crores. This has roughly doubled in the last five years.
For the same period, TASMAC’s revenue has has also roughly doubled.
The contribution of TASMAC’s revenue to the state revenue has ranged from 27% to 30% during the same period.
So how does this affect anyone? A survey conducted recently showed that people get introduced to alcohol in high school. I got some population prediction data and looked for the number of people aged 15 to 59, assuming that they are most likely to consume alcohol. This number has increased from 54% in 2001 to somewhere around 58% will reach unto 59.55% in 2026.
What does all this mean? Well, one could infer a whole lot of things from this data but the first things that come to my mind are
1) Increasing trend in number of people consuming alcohol.
2) Increasing trend in the volume of alcohol consumed by an individual.
I would leave the rest to your imagination.
Data Reference:
1) Population trend from Govt of Tamilnadu statistics.
2) Revenue receipts data from Govt of Tamilnadu
3) TASMAC turnover data from Wikipedia.