The Centre on Friday released ₹17,000 crore to States/UTs towards the balance GST compensation for the period April to June 2022.
The total amount of compensation released to the States/UTs so far, including the latest ₹ 17,000 crore amount, during FY23 is ₹ 1,15,662 crore.
Since the total Cess collection till October 2022 is only ₹72,147 crore, the balance ₹43,515 crore has been released by the Centre from its own resources, an official release said.
With this latest fund release, the Centre has released, in advance, the entire amount of Cess estimated to be collected this year till March-end available for payment of compensation to States.
This decision was taken to assist States in managing their resources and ensuring that their programmes especially the expenditure on capital is carried out successfully during the financial year.
In May this year, the Centre had released ₹86,912 crore as provisional GST compensation to States for the period Feb-May 2022 despite there was only about ₹25,000 crore in the GST Compensation Fund, by making arrangement of funds of around ₹ 62,000 crore from its own resources, according to the Union Finance Ministry.
It maybe recalled that at the time of GST implementation on July 1, 2017, the Centre had agreed to compensate States for five years till June 2022, and protect their revenues at 14 percent per annum over the base year revenue of 2015-16.
The States that received GST compensation in the latest round include Andhra Pradesh (₹682 crore), Chhattisgarh (₹500 crore), Delhi (₹1200 crore), Gujarat (₹856 crore), Haryana (₹622 crore), Karnataka (₹1915 crore), Kerala (₹773 crore), Madhya Pradesh (₹722 crore), Uttar Pradesh (₹1202 crore), Tamil Nadu (₹1188 crore) and West Bengal (₹814 crore).