India’s gross GST revenues touched ₹1,51,718 crore in October, 16.6% higher than a year ago, marking the second highest monthly collections since the launch of the indirect tax regime.
Revenues from domestic transactions, including imports of services increased 18% during the month, with the Finance Ministry stating that October marked the second highest collection from domestic transactions ‘next only to April 2022’.
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While the government didn’t share the overall revenue growth from import of goods for October, Integrated GST (IGST) collected on goods imports grew 13.02% over last October while GST Cess inflows on such imports rose 18.02%.
“This is the ninth month and for eight months in a row now, that the monthly GST revenues have been more than the ₹ 1.4 lakh crore mark,” the Ministry said.
During September 2022, whose transactions are reflected in October’s revenues, 8.3 crore e-way bills were generated, which the Ministry said ‘was significantly higher’ than 7.7 crore bills generated a month earlier.
There were significant variations among major States’ revenues during the month. While Haryana recorded a 37% uptick, followed by Karnataka (33%), Kerala (29%), West Bengal (26%) and Tamil Nadu (25%), revenues grew slower than the national average in Gujarat and Telangana (11%), Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan (10%) and Uttar Pradesh (16%).
Six States clocked negative growth, year-on-year, including Chhatisgarh (-3%), Assam (-13%), Mizoram and Manipur (-23% each) and Bihar (-1%). The erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir clocked a sharp 34% drop in revenues, even as they jumped 74% in the Union Territory of Ladakh.
“October 2022 reflects a combination of quarter-end flows relating to the transactions in the previous month, as well as the surge in GST e-way bills ahead of a robust festive season,” said ICRA chief economist Aditi Nayar.
Commenting on the dip in GST revenues’ growth rate from September’s 26% to 16.6% in October, she said this was ‘expected given the normalising base, and may continue in the next few months’.
“We continue to expect the CGST collections to exceed this year’s Budget estimates by ₹1.3-1.4 lakh crore,” Ms. Nayar said.
Abhishek Jain, partner (indirect tax) for KPMG in India, attributed the higher collections to festive spending and said collections could rise further through the festive season.
Central GST (CGST) revenues for the month were ₹26,039 crore, while the State GST (SGST) kitty was ₹33,396 crore. IGST revenues were ₹81,778 crore, including ₹37,297 crore collected on import of goods and GST Cess collections were ₹10,505 crore, including ₹825 crore from goods imports.
The highest GST collections in a month were recorded in April this year, at ₹1,67,540 crore.
