GST collection hits a record Rs1,06,577 cr in March

The number of tax filers also went up by 2.47 lakh during the February-March payment cycle.

Gross GST revenue collected in March 2019 stood at Rs106,577 crore, which included CGST of Rs20,353 crore, SGST of Rs27,520 crore, IGST of Rs50,418 crore (including Rs23,521 crore collected on imports) and cess of Rs8,286 crore (including Rs891 crore collected on imports), the finance ministry said.

As many as 7.60 million GSTR3B (summary return form) returns were filed for February up to 31 March, compared with 7.35 million GSTR3Bs in the previous month.

The government has settled Rs17,261 crore to CGST and Rs13,689 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement. Further, Rs20,000 crore has been settled from the balance IGST available with the centre on provisional basis in the ratio of 50:50 between centre and states. 

The total revenue earned by central government and the state governments after regular and provisional settlement in March 2019 stood at Rs47,614 crore for CGST and Rs51,209 crore for SGST.

Compared to March 2018 revenues of Rs92,167 crore, revenue during March 2019 shows a growth of 15.6 per cent yaer-on-year. Revenue for the last quarter of the 2018-19 financial year 14.3 per cent higher than revenue collected during the same period last year. 

The monthly average of GST revenue during 2018-19 is Rs98,114 crore, which is 9.2 per cent higher than FY 2017-18. These figures indicate that the revenue growth has been picking up in recent months, despite various rate rationalization measures.

For 2018-19, GST collections largely remained below the monthly expected average mop-up of Rs1,00,000 crore, barring April, October, January and March, mainly due to several GST rate cuts as well as procedural hurdles.