Cow cess of Rs 10 per bottle will be imposed on sale of liquor bottles in Himachal Pradesh

The move is expected to fetch Rs 100 crore revenue per annum.

Himachal CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Friday announced that a cow cess of Rs 10 per bottle would be imposed on the sale of liquor bottles. The move is expected to fetch Rs 100 crore in revenue per annum.

The announcement came as Sukhu presented the first annual budget in his tenure for the financial year 2023-24 in the state assembly on Friday.

To note, the state excise department has already been collecting Rs 2 per bottle 'gau'-cess on sale of liquor, which is kept aside for maintenance and setting-up of gausadans or cow sanctuaries set up in over 12 districts of the state.

The hike in the cess comes even as the state's GDP growth has remained sluggish during 2022-23. The growth rate dropped to 6.4 per cent from 7.6 per cent growth in 2021-22.

Thanking the people of the state for giving the mandate to Congress, Sukhu said that one of the biggest challenges before him was the difficult financial situation. He noted how his administration had inherited a massive debt burden and arrears worth Rs 10,000 crore.