VIJAYAWADA: The COVID-induced lockdown has had an adverse impact on the revenues of the State government. The revenue collection of the Commercial Taxes department in the first quarter of 2020-21 (April 1 to June 30, 2020) was only 45.33 per cent of the target.
As against the target of Rs 13,425.77 crore in the first quarter of the fiscal, revenue collection of the department stood at Rs 6,086.41 crore, a 44.7 per cent drop in comparison to the Rs 11,005.49 crore collected in the same period last yea r (2019-2020).
However, the officials of the Commercial Taxes department expressed hope that revenue collection will pick up pace in the coming months. GST revenue, petroleum products, liquor and professional taxes come under the Commercial Taxes department. In April, only Rs 1,444.41 crore was collected by the department against the monthly target of Rs 4,858.35 crore, a meagre 29.73 per cent, because of the strict enforcement of the lockdown.
However, following the partial exemptions, there was a marginal increase in revenue collection in May (32.91 per cent) and the collections went up by 76.09 per cent by Juneend, taking the cumulative revenue in the first quarter to 45.33 per cent of the target.
The data of revenue collections in the first quarter, accessed by TNIE, shows that the revenue from petroleum products stood at 57.38 per cent, followed by GST revenue, 51.40 per cent. However, the revenue from liquor stood at 21.5 per cent. The sale of liquor was nil in April because of the closure of all liquor outlets and bars.
Though the liquor business was commenced from May, the revenue fell short as only Rs 693.51 crore was generated as against the target of Rs 3,294.34 crore in the first quarter. Chief Commissioner (Commercial Taxes) Peeyush Kumar felt that the results of June are encouraging and said they were hopeful of revival of the economy and increase in revenue collections in the coming months.
