The Central and state governments are taking all steps to ensure supply of essential items during the lockdown to combat the novel Coronavirus. These include hand sanitisers, which are used by the public at large, health workers, hospitals, etc. Their demand is increasing day by day. In order to maintain demand and supply balance, state government, authorities including excise commissioners, cane commissioners, drug controllers and district collectors of various states have been advised to remove any bottlenecks in the supply of ethanol/ENA to manufacturers of hand sanitisers and to grant permissions/licences to the applicants, including distilleries and sugar mills, who intend to manufacture hand sanitisers.
Distilleries and sugar mills which can produce hand sanitisers in bulk have also been motivated to manufacture them. These manufacturers have also been asked to work in three shifts to maximise their output.
About 45 distilleries and 564 other manufacturers have been granted permission to produce hand sanitisers. Over 55 distilleries are likely to be given permission in one or two days, and many more are being motivated to produce sanitisers in this scenario.
While most of them have commenced production, others are likely to commence production in a week’s time. Thus, there will be sufficient supply of hand sanitisers for the consumers and hospitals.
In order to ensure that hand sanitisers are made available to the general public and hospitals at a reasonable price, the Government has also fixed the maximum retail price (MRP) of sanitisers.
The retail prices of hand sanitisers shall not be more than Rs 100 per 200ml bottle. The prices of other quantities of hand sanitisers shall be fixed in the proportion of these prices.