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At ₹1.23-lakh crore, the Goods and Services Tax collection in March was the highest ever since the GST regime was introduced in July 2017.
“In line with the trend of recovery in GST revenues over past five months, the revenues for March are 27 per cent higher than the GST revenues in the same month last year,” a Finance Ministry statement said. During the month, the revenue from import of goods was 70 per cent higher and that from domestic transactions (including import of services) 17 per cent more than the same month last year.
GST revenues improved steadily through 2020-21 rising from a negative 41 per cent in the first quarter to (-)8 per cent in the second and to 8 per cent and 14 per cent in the third and fourth quarters compared to the same time-frame of the previous year, “clearly indicating the trend in recovery of GST revenues as well as the economy as a whole,” the statement said
GST revenues have been holding above the ₹1-lakh-crore mark for six months now. “Closer monitoring against fake-billing, deep-data analytics using data from multiple sources including GST, income-tax and Customs IT systems, and effective tax administration have contributed to the steady increase in revenues over the last few months,” the statement said.
Key highlight
A key highlight is that barring two Union Territories (Daman & Diu and Andaman & Nicobar Islands), all 28 States and 8 UTs have reported a growth in the collection. Big contributor such as Maharashtra registered a growth of 14 per cent, while Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh saw an increase of 20 per cent, 11 per cent, 23 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively. Another big contributor Haryana posted a 17 per cent jump in collections while Delhi raked in 20 per cent more in March than the corresponding month of last fiscal.
MS Mani, Senior Director at Deloitte India, noted that in addition to the trend of higher overall GST collections over the past six months, all major States have shown a significant increase over the previous year. “Further, the increase in collections on imports accompanied by the increase in domestic transactions would indicate that the overall production/consumption cycle is back to normal,” he said.
Aditi Nayar, Principal Economist with ICRA, said the healthy GST collections in March, along with the additional devolution of ₹45,000 crore to States for the just-concluded fiscal, confirm “our view that the tax revenues in FY2021 have exceeded the RE. As a result, we continue to expect the GoI's fiscal deficit to undershoot the FY2021 RE of ₹18.5 trillion, suggesting ample cash balances at the start of FY2022.”
GST collections (in Rs crore)
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