'Industries to shine in Q4'

Industrial performance in the fourth quarter ending March 31 this year is likely to outperform the previous three months because of better performance of sectors like cement, automobile and capital goods, said top government officials in an interaction with India Inc.

This better than expected performance will result in overall tax receipts exceeding last year’s collections.

“The trend suggests that the gross revenues of direct and indirect taxes of this year will exceed nominally what we had collected last year. This is in spite of the sacrifices we had to make (in the fiscal stimulus packages),” Revenue Secretary P V Bhide said at the national conference and annual session of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

In the fiscal ended March 2008, the net tax receipts stood at Rs 4,39,547 crore, while the revised estimate for the current fiscal is around Rs 26,500 crore above last year’s collections.

Other officials who attended the session included Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, Commerce Secretary Gopal Pillai, Economic Affairs Secretary Ashok Chawla and Planning Commission Secretary Subhash Chandra Pani.

“I am happy to hear that the mood is changing and that the gloom has lifted. We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” Chandrasekhar said.

According to government officials, sectors like cement, steel, capital goods, passenger cars and trucks have shown signs of revival by posting better production and sales figures in February.

“Overall, it seems we are seeing some hopeful signs,” said Chandrasekhar, who heads a government panel that was set up to monitor the Indian economy in the backdrop of the global slowdown.

In the third quarter ended December 2008, industrial sector, which accounts for 26.5 per cent of India’s GDP, grew at a much slower pace of 2.4 per cent, compared with 8 per cent in October-December 2007. This is one of the reasons for GDP growth rate to drop sharply to 5.3 per cent in the same period.