The Centre on Thursday advised the state government authorities including Excise Commissioners, Cane Commissioners, Drug Controllers as well as District Collectors of various states to remove any bottlenecks in the supply of ethanol/ENA to manufacturers of hand sanitizers and to give permissions /licenses to the applicants including distilleries who intend to manufacture hand sanitizers.
Distilleries/ Sugar mills which can produce hand sanitizers in bulk have also been motivated to manufacture hand sanitizers. These manufacturers have also been asked to work in three shifts to maximize their output.
About 45 distilleries and 564 other manufacturers have been granted permission to produce hand sanitizers; more than 55 distilleries are likely to be given permission in one or two days, and many more are being motivated to produce sanitizers in this scenario.
Most of them have commenced production and others are likely to commence production in a week’s time; thus there will be sufficient supply of hand sanitizers for the consumers and hospitals.
In order to ensure that hand sanitizers are made available to the general public and hospitals at a reasonable price, the government has also fixed the maximum retail price of sanitizers. The retail prices of hand sanitizers shall not be more than Rs 100 per bottle of 200 ml; the prices of other of hand sanitizers shall be fixed in the proportion of these prices.
Source: Zee News