NEW DELHI: The festival season did not boost GST collections, which remained below the Rs 1 lakh crore mark for the third consecutive month in October. Indirect tax mop-up stood at Rs 95,380 crore last month, a 5.3 per cent decline compared to Rs 1,00,710 crore collected in the same month last year, government data showed on Friday. This is, however, better than September revenue which was a low Rs 91,916 crore.
“The gross GST revenue collected in the month of October 2019 is Rs 95,380 crore of which CGST is Rs 17,582 crore, SGST is Rs 23,674 crore, IGST is Rs 46,517 crore (including Rs 21,446 crore collected on imports) and cess is Rs 7,607 crore (including Rs 774 crore collected on imports),” the finance ministry said in a statement on Friday.
The total revenue earned by the central and the state governments after regular settlement in October was Rs 38,224 crore for CGST and Rs 37,645 crore for SGST. Over 7.3 million GSTR 3B returns (summary of self-assessed return) were filed for the month of September.
"Lower than expected GST collections in a festive month is reflective of a slowdown. Since GST is a consumption tax, lower collections in the past few months are indicative of the decline in consumer spending," said MS Mani, partner, Deloitte India.