The goods and services tax (GST) collections in March 2022 hit an all-time high of Rs 1,42,095 crore, driven by economic recovery and anti-evasion drives such as action against fake billers, according to an official statement released on Friday. The previous record GST collection was seen in January this year, when it stood at Rs 1,40,986 crore. “The gross GST collection in March 2022 is at all-time high, breaching earlier record of Rs 1,40,986 crore collected in the Month of January 2022,” the finance ministry said in the statement.
It added that the gross GST revenue collected in March 2022 stood at Rs 1,42,095 crore, of which Central GST was Rs 25,830 crore, State GST was Rs 32,378 crore, Integrated GST was Rs 74,470 crore (including Rs 39,131 crore collected on import of goods). Cess stood at Rs 9,417 crore, including Rs 981 crore collected on import of goods.
“The revenues for the month of March 2022 are 15 per cent higher than the GST revenues in the same month last year and 46 per cent higher than the GST revenues in March 2020,” it said. The improvement in revenue has also been due to various rate rationalisation measures undertaken by the Council to correct inverted duty structure, it said.
Deloitte India partner M S Mani said, “The record GST collections have also been aided by the strong sales activity of corporates in March, as they race to close the fiscal with high topline (revenue) growth. This has a direct bearing on GST, which is a transaction tax.”
With the major economic indicators on an upswing, aided by a data-mining approach to detect cases of GST evasion, there has been a significant impact on the collections, Mani said. “While state-wise variations exist in terms of the growth in GST collections, it would be interesting to see an analysis linking the statewise GDP growth with the GST collections during the same period.”
The Union finance ministry said the government settled Rs 29,816 crore CGST and Rs 25,032 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement during March 2022. It also settled a Rs 20,000-crore IGST on an ad-hoc basis in 50:50 ratio between the Centre and states during the month.
The total revenue of central and state governments after regular and ad-hoc settlements stood Rs 65,646 crore for CGST and Rs 67,410 crore for SGST, said the statement. The central government also released a GST compensation of Rs 18,252 crore to states/ UTs during the month.
During March, revenues from import of goods jumped 25 per cent year-on-year and the receipts from domestic transaction (including import of services) increased 11 per cent y-o-y.
The total number of e-way bills generated in the month of February 2022 is 6.91 crore as compared to e-way bills generated in January 2022 (6.88 crore) despite being a shorter month, which indicates recovery of business activity at faster pace.
State-wise, Maharashtra saw the most GST collection at Rs 20,305 crore, followed by Gujarat (Rs 9,158 crore), Karnataka (Rs 8,750 crore), Tamil Nadu (Rs 8,023 crore), Haryana (Rs 6,654 crore) and Uttar Pradesh (Rs 6,620 crore).
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