Centre targets direct tax collection at 12% of gross domestic product

The Union Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, said here on Sunday that during the current financial year revenue collection through direct taxes could reach 12 per cent of the gross domestic product.

Estimates suggests during the last financial year it was at a single digit figure, around 9.47 per cent of the GDP. In 2010-11, the contribution of direct taxes was 10.15 per cent.

“This financial year's target is to take it to 12 per cent of the GDP at constant prices,” he said at an inaugurating a single window income-tax service centre in city.

“This year, there is an additional focus on higher direct tax collection through increased compliance by the tax payers”.

To achieve the current year's target of Rs 5.7 lakh crore, the Finance Minister said, early next month revenue department would finalise an ingenious strategy. At another event, speaking on the “Financial Security and International Interdependence”, Mr Mukherjee said: “In the past three years, we have seen how the financial security of individuals and the stability of the financial systems across countries were compromised by the global crisis and the resulting economic slowdown.

“No country has been immune to the contagion from the fallout of global financial crisis.

“There was recession in the developed world and significant fall in growth in the developing and emerging economies. It dislocated labour in many sectors of the economy, creating financial hardship and unemployment”.

He felt that India had not had to go through “any financial turbulence, as a result of the earlier phase of financial deregulation”.

This, he asserted, was a testimony to it consistent view that “reforms in global standards have to be adapted to local conditions”.

> jayanta_mallick@thehindu.co.in

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