GST collection at Rs 1.03 lakh cr in December, indicates signs of recovery

New Delhi: For a second time in a row, the GST revenue collection remained above the Rs 1 lakh crore mark with December mop-up at Rs 1.03 lakh crore indicating a pick-up in consumption.

GST collection in November stood at Rs 1,03,492 crore. Before that it was in July when the mop-up crossed the Rs 1 lakh crore mark at Rs 1.02 lakh crore.

The GST collection stood at Rs 94,726 crore in December 2018, as per an official statement.

According to official sources, the GST revenue last month reflects a pick-up in consumption and improvement in compliances.

"The GST revenue during the month of December 2019 from domestic transactions has shown an impressive growth of 16 per cent over the revenue during the month of December 2018," the statement said.

If we consider Integrated Goods and Service Tax (IGST) collected from imports, the total revenue during December 2019 has increased 9 per cent in comparison to the revenue same month a year ago, it said.

During December 2019, it said, the IGST on import of goods has seen a negative growth of 10 per cent, but is an improvement over 13 per cent de-growth in November, it added.

Of the gross Rs 1,03,184 crore last month, CGST is Rs 19,962 crore, SGST is Rs 26,792 crore, IGST is Rs 48,099 crore (including Rs 21,295 crore collected on imports) and Cess is Rs 8,331 crore (including Rs 847 crore collected on imports), the statement said.

The total number of GSTR 3B returns filed for the month of November up to December 31, 2019 was 81.21 lakh.

The government has settled Rs 21,814 crore to Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) and Rs 15,366 crore to State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) from IGST as regular settlement.

The total revenue earned by the Centre and state governments after regular settlement in December 2019 is Rs 41,776 crore for CGST and Rs 42,158 crore for SGST.

The government has set an ambitious Rs 1.1 lakh crore monthly GST target for the remaining part of the current fiscal and asked taxmen to step up efforts to achieve the goal.

Revenue Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey held a video conference meeting last month with top tax officials of departments looking after both income tax and indirect taxes such as GST and asked them to step up efforts to achieve tax targets.

Commenting on the GST collection, M S Mani, Partner, Deloitte India said the reversal in the trend of declining GST collections should continue for the remaining months of the current fiscal in order to keep the fiscal deficit under control.

With the trend of improving collections and the e-invoicing and new returns slated in the coming months, it is now expected that the GST collections would show a steady improvement, although it may still fall short of the annual targets, he said.

During December 2019, Arunachal Pradesh recorded more than two-fold jump in GST collection to Rs 58 crore from Rs 26 crore in the same month previous year.

It was followed by Nagaland witnessing 88 per cent increase, Manipur 64 per cent and Mizoram 60 per cent.

However, Union Territory Lakshadweep recorded 78 per cent decline in GST collection to Rs 1 crore and Jharkhand posted decline of 3 per cent at Rs 1,943 crore.