New Delhi: Goods and services tax (GST) collections for March hit a record high of Rs 1.42 lakh crore, up by 6.8 per cent from the previous month. The key reasons behind such a huge mopup are continued recovery in the economy and anti-evasion drive by the GST authorities. The GST collections rose 15 per cent annually in March, the data released by the finance ministry showed on Friday.
The previous high for collection of GST revenues was in January 2022 at over Rs 1.40 lakh crore.
"Coupled with economic recovery, anti-evasion activities, especially action against fake billers have been contributing to the enhanced GST. The improvement in revenue has also been due to various rate rationalisation measures undertaken by the (GST) Council to correct inverted duty structure," the ministry said in a statement.
As per the statement, the gross GST revenue collected in March 2022 is Rs 1,42,095 crore, of which central GST is Rs 25,830 crore, states GST is Rs 32,378 crore, integrated GST is Rs 74,470 crore (including Rs 39,131 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is Rs 9,417 crore (including Rs 981 crore collected on import of goods). "The gross GST collection in March 2022 is all-time high, breaching an earlier record of Rs 1,40,986 crore collected in January. The revenues for March 2022 are 15 per cent higher than the GST revenues in the same month last year," it showed.
"During the month, revenues from import of goods was 25 per cent higher and the revenues from domestic transaction (including import of services) are 11 per cent higher than the revenues from these sources during the same month last year. For the fourth quarter of financial year 2021-22, average monthly GST collection amounted to Rs 1.38 lakh crore. For the first, second and third quarters, average monthly collections came in at Rs 1.10 lakh crore, Rs 1.15 lakh crore and Rs 1.30 lakh crore, respectively," the data showed.
In March, the government settled Rs 29,816 crore to CGST and Rs 25,032 crore to SGST from IGST. "In addition, Centre has also settled Rs 20,000 crore of IGST on ad-hoc basis in the ratio of 50:50 between Centre and States/UTs (Union Territories) in this month," the government said.
