The Hindu Business Line : Oct excise revenues fall 8.7% as slowdown bites

New Delhi, Nov. 11 The Centre’s excise duty revenues declined 8.7 per cent in October 2008 to Rs 9,399 crore compared with Rs 10,293 crore recorded in the same month last year.

Industry observers say that the sluggish growth in industrial output could be an important factor behind the drop in excise duty collection. However, they also highlighted that excise duty collections are not usually buoyant in the first half of the financial year.

This collection performance is in sharp contrast to the 14 per cent year-on-year growth registered in October last year.

Also, excise duty collections in September 2008 had declined on a year-on-year basis. Even sequentially, the excise duty collections in October 2008 were lower than the September 2008 collections of Rs 9,800 crore. However, collections for the first seven months of the current fiscal (April-October 2008) registered 0.6 per cent increase at Rs 65,322 crore (Rs 64,948 crore).

Customs duty revenues too saw a decline in October 2008 at Rs 9,265 crore, representing a 0.9 per cent drop over Rs 9,353 crore collected in same month last year. In October 2007, customs revenues had grown by 25 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

For the April-October 2008 period, customs duty revenues recorded 15.2 per cent increase at Rs 66,621 crore (Rs 57,833 crore), an official release said.

In the case of service tax, the figures for October 2008 are yet to be collated and released. The Centre’s service tax collections during April-September 2008 stood at Rs 29,867 crore, which represents 28.7 per cent increase over collections of Rs 23,204 crore in the same period last year. Service tax collections in September 2008 stood at Rs 5,766 crore (Rs 4,888 crore).