January sees second highest GST collection at ₹1.38 lakh cr.
India clocked its second highest gross Goods and Service Tax collections in January at ₹1,38,394 crore, 15% higher than a year earlier and 25% more than the GST revenues in the preCOVID month of January 2020.
The numbers are likely to be revised upwards as they only factored in returns filed till 3 pm on Monday. The highest monthly GST collection since the introduction of the tax in July 2017, was ₹1,39,708 crore recorded in April last year.
“Revenues from import of goods were 26% higher and the revenues from domestic transaction (including import of services) are 12% higher than the revenues from these sources during the same month last year,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement. This was the fourth month that GST revenues have crossed ₹1.3 lakh crore; the Ministry said it expected ‘the positive trend’ to continue in the coming months as well. Apart from settling ₹29,726 crore to Central GST and ₹24,180 crore to States’ GST kitty from the Integrated GST (IGST) collections, the Centre also settled ₹35,000 crore of IGST on an adhoc basis in the ratio of 50:50 between the Centre and States and Union Territories in January.
GST compensation amounting to ₹18,000 crore was also released to the States in the month.
“The adhoc release of IGST... and the release of GST compensation to States should boost their cash flows, helping them to speed up expenditure in this quarter,” ICRA chief economist Aditi Nayar told The Hindu, noting that the healthy revenues were in line with the increase in eway bills generated in December visavis November.