The Finance Ministry will be required to achieve 47 per cent of the Budget target for indirect taxes, comprising customs and excise duties and service tax, in just four months (December-March).

According to latest data released by the Ministry, total collections in eight months of the current fiscal grew by a little over 7 per cent to reach ₹3.29 lakh crore.

This is 52.7 per cent of the total Budget target of ₹6.23 lakh crore.

Daunting task This target needs the collections to grow at the rate of 25.8 per cent over the actual collection of 2013-14. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has already said that this target is daunting.

In order to boost revenue, the Government raised excise duty twice within a month on petrol and diesel, which is expected to net ₹10,500 crore.

At the same time, procedural curbs on gold import have also been removed to mobilise additional tax revenue.

Reflecting the current state of the manufacturing sector, excise duty collection is still in the negative zone for the April-November period.

Excise duty is levied at the factory gate.

Now the hope, as reflected by the Purchasing Manager Index (PMI), is on good progress in manufacturing activities in October and November.

Even the automobile sector has shown good growth in November, a trend which is likely to to continue in December.

This was also reflected on excise duty collections in November, which grew by over 10 per cent.

However, service tax has maintained a good tempo, while customs duty collection has also picked up.

If the same trend continues in the remaining months, Finance Ministry officials expect double digit growth in overall indirect tax collections, even it fails to achieve the Budget target.

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