India’s gross Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections in September rose 26% year-on-year to ₹1,47,686 crore, with revenue from goods imports jumping 39% and that from domestic transactions and services imports yielding 22% more than in September 2021.
This is the seventh successive month that revenues from the indirect tax have remained above ₹1.4 lakh crore and marks the eighth such occasion since the GST regime was implemented in July 2017.
On a month-on-month basis, September’s revenues, which reflect transactions carried out in August, were 2.84% higher than the gross GST collected in August. In August, 7.7 crore e-way bills were generated, 2.66% higher than the 7.5 crore bills generated in July.
“The growth in GST revenue till September 2022 over the same period last year is 27%, continuing to display very high buoyancy,” the Finance Ministry said.
The fact that GST revenues were sustaining at a higher level with substantial year-on-year growth was ‘encouraging’, although the growth rate “may wear off in the coming months, as the base normalises and inflation moderates”, ICRA chief economist Aditi Nayar, said in a note.
While central GST collections accounted for just ₹25,271 crore in September, State GST inflows contributed ₹31,813 crore, while Integrated GST or IGST brought in ₹80,464 crore, over half of which came from import of goods. GST Compensation Cess collections were ₹10,137 crore, including ₹856 crore from goods imports.
Mahesh Jaising, partner and leader (Indirect Tax) at Deloitte India, said the key contributors to GST revenues’ momentum appeared to be the increase in imports as businesses build-up stocks for the upcoming festive season, along with the expansion in usage of e-invoicing and e-way bills as well as the use of analytics for tax audits.
India's goods imports stood at $61.90 billion during August, the sixth successive month they had exceeded $60 billion.
“With the pandemic behind us and a further reduction in the e-invoicing threshold from this month and the recent amendments to extend year-end compliance due dates, we expect the last quarter of 2022 to witness even higher collections,” Mr. Jaising reckoned.
Revenues from domestic transactions grew 22%, but there were significant variations in the trend seen across States. Revenues jumped 67% in Bihar, 35% in Goa, 33% in Haryana, 32% in Delhi and 29% in Maharashtra.
Kerala and West Bengal (27%), Karnataka (25%) and Uttar Pradesh (23%) also grew faster than the national average, but Andhra Pradesh with 21% growth, followed by 16% in Gujarat, 13% in Odisha and 10% in Tamil Nadu, lagged behind.
September 20 marked the second highest single-day GST collection of ₹49,453 crore with the second highest number of 8.77 lakh challans filed, the Ministry said, asserting this "clearly shows that the GST portal maintained by GSTN has fully stabilized and is glitch free".
“September also saw another milestone getting crossed when more than 1.1 crore e-way bills and e-invoices combined (72.94 lakh e-invoices and 37.74 lakh e-way bills) were generated without any glitch on the portal run by NIC on September 30,” it added.
Published - October 01, 2022 01:39 pm IST
