Telangana State GST collections soar

Telangana continues to register impressive growth in the collection of Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the current year, maintaining more than 20 per cent growth till the end of February. Interestingly, the State collected a whopping Rs 1,040 crore of State GST (SGST) in February when the national level GST collections were Rs 97,246 crore, down from Rs 1.02 lakh crore collected in January.

In GST era, February 2019 has been the best month for the Commercial Taxes Department of Telangana government. The officials collected Rs 1,040 crore of SGST in last month, beating previous best of Rs 1,021 crore collected in April last year. The officials could achieve the targets and collect nearly Rs 3,000 crore of GST including SGST, Central GST (CGST) and Integrated GST (IGST) in February.

Despite a nation-wide drop in GST collections, we could achieve the growth due to consistent pursual of pending cases of GST arrears. We hope to beat the February collections during March as the financial year comes to an end,” said an official in the Commercial Taxes department, which issued notices to traders who failed to pay their arrears.

The State’s growth in tax collection has been one



of the highest in the country. The State collected Rs 904 crore State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) in March 2018, a record of sorts after the implementation of GST from July 2017. The State registered nearly Rs 22,700 crore GST collection between April 2018 and February this year. Except for July when the collections were down by over Rs 250 crore, the State’s GST collection has been consistently above the previous year’s monthly collection.

Meanwhile, the nation-wide GST collections have reduced over the past few months and GST revenues of the Central government stood at Rs 97,246 crore in February against Rs 1.02 crore collected in January this year. In all, the Central GST collections were Rs 17,626 crore, while the State GST collections were Rs 24,192 crore and integrated GST collections were at Rs 46,953 crore in February. Another Rs 8,476 crore was collected as cess under various accounts. During the corresponding period last year, the GST collections were Rs 85,962 crore which is 13.12 per cent less than this year. As on February 28, the GST collections were Rs 10.7 lakh crore across the nation. The number is likely to increase by at least Rs 1 lakh crore.