After 3-month gap, GST collection crosses ₹1 lakh crore in November

After a gap of three months, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue collection crossed the ₹1 lakh crore mark in November. The revenue grew last month by 6% and the collection totalled to ₹1.03 lakh crore.

In October, the GST collection was ₹95,380 crore. Last year, November witnessed a collection of ₹97,637 crore, reports said.

Of gross ₹1,03,492 crore in November, CGST is ₹19,592 crore, SGST ₹27,144 crore, IGST ₹49,028 crore (including ₹20,948 crore collected on imports) and Cess ₹7,727 crore (including ₹869 crore collected on imports), an official statement said.

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After two months of negative growth, the GST revenue witnessed an impressive recovery with a growth of 6% in November 2019 over the November 2018 collections, it said.

According to official sources, the number reflects pick up in consumption and improvement in compliance as well. Non-intrusive means of tax collection has helped improved compliance, sources said.

During November, the GST collection on domestic transactions witnessed a growth of 12%, the highest during the year, it added. The statement further said that November 2019 collection is the third highest monthly collection since the introduction of GST, next only to April 2019 and March 2019 collections.

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This is the eighth time since the inception of GST in July 2017 that monthly collection has crossed the mark of ₹1 lakh crore. After July this year, when GST collection was Rs 1,02,083 crore, it has crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in November.

The GST collection on imports continued to see negative growth at (-)13%, but was an improvement over last month’s growth of (-)20%, the statement said. The total number of GSTR 3B Returns filed for the month of October up to November 30, 2019 is 77.83 lakh, it said.

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The government has settled ₹25,150 crore to CGST and ₹17,431 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement, it added. The total revenue earned by central government and the state governments after regular settlement in the month of November is ₹44,742 crore for CGST and ₹44,576 crore for the SGST.

Commenting on the latest GST number, M S Mani, Partner, Deloitte India said crossing ₹1 lakh crore in a festive month after few months of tepid collections would act as a sentiment booster.

(With inputs from agencies)