Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: The new financial year (2021-22) began on Thursday on a positive note: at nearly Rs 1.24 lakh crore (Rs.1.24 trillion), the Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue collection in March 2021 was the highest since the tax system was introduced in July 2017—indicating rapid recovery of Indian economy jolted by the prolonged, nationwide lockdown in 2020 in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Also, the collections were up 27 per cent when compared with the year-ago period, the government said.
“GST revenues during March 2021 are the highest since the introduction of GST. In line with the trend of recovery in the GST revenues over the past five months, the revenues for the month of March 2021 are 27 per cent higher than the GST revenues in the same month last year,” the Ministry of Finance said in a statement.
The GST revenues were above Rs 1 trillion for the last six months and a steep increasing trend over this period are clear indicators of rapid economic recovery post-pandemic, the government said.
“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 also contributed to the steady increase in tax revenue over last few months,” it said.
Of the total revenue collected, Central GST (CGST) was Rs 22,973 crore, State GST (SGST) Rs 29,329 crore, Integrated GST (IGST) Rs 62,842 crore (including Rs 31,097 crore collected on import of goods) and cess was Rs 8,757 crore (including Rs 935 crore collected on import of goods).
The government has settled Rs 21,879 crore to CGST and Rs 17,230 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlements. Besides, the government also settled Rs 28,000 crore as IGST ad-hoc settlement in the ratio of 50:50 between the Centre and the states.
The total revenue of the Centre and the states after regular and ad-hoc settlements in March 2021 was Rs 58,852 crore for CGST and Rs 60,559 crore for SGST. The Centre also released a compensation of Rs 30,000 crore in the same month.
During March, revenues from the import of goods were 70 per cent higher and the revenues from the domestic transaction (including import of services) are 17 per cent higher than the revenues from these sources during the same month last fiscal year (2019-20).
The GST revenue witnessed a growth rate of minus-41 per cent, minus-8 per cent, 8 per cent and 14 per cent in the first, second, third and fourth quarters of 2020-21, respectively, as compared to the same period in the previous fiscal, indicating the trend in the recovery of GST revenues as well as the economy as a whole.