March GST revenue at record high of ₹1.42 lakh crore

GST revenue in the month of March has hit an all time high of ₹1,42,095 crore. The collection during the month is up 15% year-on-year from ₹1,23,902 crore in March last year.

"The gross GST revenue collected in the month of March 2022 is ₹1,42,095 crore of which CGST is ₹25,830 crore, SGST is ₹32,378 crore, IGST is ₹74,470 crore (including ₹39,131 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is ₹9,417 crore (including ₹981 crore collected on import of goods)," said a release from the Ministry of Finance.

"The gross GST collection in March 2022 is all time high breaching earlier record of ₹1,40,986 crore collected in the month of January 2022," the ministry release added.

"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 rationalization measures undertaken by the Council to correct inverted duty structure," it added.

Reacting to the record collection, MS Mani, partner at Deloitte India, said, "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. The record GST collections have been aided by the strong sales activity of corporates in March, as they race to close the fiscal with high top line growth. This has a direct bearing on GST, which is a transaction tax."

Parag Mehta, partner, NA Shah said GST collections have reflected an upward trajectory from last three months.

"With the signs of Covid-19 receding, economy opening up and anti evasion measures being tightened the recovery has substantially improved. With further reduction in e-invoicing limits to 5 crore there is bound to be substantial increase even in subsequent months," Shah added.

The finance ministry said the average monthly gross GST collection for the last quarter of the FY22 has been ₹1.38 lakh crore against the average monthly collection of ₹1.10 lakh crore, ₹1.15 lakh crore and ₹1.30 lakh crore in the first, second and third quarters respectively.