Goods and services tax (GST) receipts increased 13.4% to £ 17.20 billion, the second-highest amount ever, due to a recovery in import mop-up. All other states recorded strong growth, according to figures supplied by the finance ministry, with the exception of problematic Manipur, which experienced a 19% decrease in revenues in October (based on sales in September), and Himachal Pradesh (-2%) that has been severely damaged by rains.
In a statement, the finance ministry said collection from domestic sources was 13% higher. A break-up of the components showed that central GST rose 15.4% to top £3 billion, while state GST kitty was 14.3% higher at £3.81 billion.
Interstate sales and imports are subject to integrated GST, which increased by 11.7% to £9.13 billion. The expected increase in IGST on imports during this period was 13%, amounting to £4.21 billion. Likewise, the import duty increased by 56% to around £130 million.
“The remarkable growth in GST collections over the past few months is not only on account of the underlying strong economic factors, but also due to the efforts of the tax authorities in deploying tools to compare data sets to determine short payment and evasion. The growing emphasis on audits led by specific information available on various databases, not only on the GST portal, has led to a significant increase in compliance across sectors and states. This is also reflected in the upsurge in the GST collections across key manufacturing and consuming states,” said MS Mani, partner at Deloitte India.