Maha, Goa may help India fix wine row with EU

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New Delhi, Jul 10 : excise duties.

Following the Centre’s decision on July 3, 2007, the EU, had on July 13, 2007, suspended its complaint to the WTO dispute settlement body. This was accepted by the WTO on July 16, 2007. “If they (the EU) want to go again to the WTO, they would have to consult us before that. But we are being proactive here and would hold talks with their liquor industry representatives that would include leading wine and scotch whiskey makers,” the official said.

The Centre now wants to know from the European liquor companies if they are facing discrimination in different states regarding the slab system of duties or in the manner of collection of such levies, or if it is even in norms regarding licensing, vending, labelling warehousing or transportation.

In a bid to make transactions smoother for liquor companies, attract more domestic and foreign companies into the over $11 billion (by sales) liquor market and also to curb smuggling of the item, the Centre is also considering a proposal for a nation-wide uniform tax structure on liquor as opposed to the present situation of around 30 dissimilar duty regimes in various states.

Meanwhile, Karnataka also hiked duties on spirits in April this year. The new excise duty structure in Karnataka at the rate of 200% for spirit brands. India sells about one million cases of wine a year—that is expected to double by 2011.