Despite, the partial lockdown in most of the States during April, GST collection is expected to be in the range of ₹1.15- 1.20 lakh crore in April,2021 on account of raid economic recovery after lockdown in view of pandemic was removed, State Bank of India’s Ecowrap report said Friday.

“After clocking record collections in March 2021 ( ₹1.24 lakh crore), our internal simulation model indicates that April 2021 GST collections will be in the range of ₹1.15-1.20 lakh crore. This will be quite impressive given the fact that during the April month most of the States imposed partial lockdowns and this move is expected to hamper economic momentum,” the SBI research report Ecowrap said.

The report also added that the all India GST E-way bills till April 25 reached 4.89 crore and it is estimated that it would cross 5.5 crore comfortably, given the past trends.

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GST revenue collection crossed ₹1 lakh crore-mark at a stretch for the last six months i.e from October-March and a steep increasing trend over this period is a clear indicator of rapid economic recovery post-lockdown measures, according to the report.

Besides that, closer monitoring against fake-billing, deep data analytics using data from multiple sources including GST, IT and Customs IT systems and effective tax administration also contributed to the steady increase in tax revenue over the last few months, said the report.

“We believe that any disruption in GST collections will be transient, and the States will have comfortable SGST collections. If we look at last year trend, given the SGST collection, allocation of IGST to states and Cess amount, it is around 89 per cent of the budgeted numbers of ₹6.5 lakh crore. There is a substantial portion of IGST which is unallocated,” the report said adding that if the 50:50 distribution takes place, then States will be only short by around ₹6,000 crore, which is impressive in the backdrop of pandemic and imposition of stricter lockdown measures imposed last year.

The report further added that the demand for work by households under MGNREGA increased by 92 per cent to 2.57 crore households in April 2021, highest in any April since 2013, as compared with 1.34 crore in Apr’20. This indicates the extent of reverse migration of workers to their native states.