FM asks officials to collect more in taxes

As tax revenue collections grow at a snail’s pace, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday asked his officials to jack-up the revenue collections in the last three months of the financial year. The finance ministry has set lower targets for tax collections in the Revised Estimates (RE), which would be revealed at the presentation of the interim Budget next month. But the finance minister is now hopeful of mopping more than the RE.

“While revised estimates are lower than Budget Estimates, going by the trend I urge you to do better than RE and show what you are capable of,” he said addressing the Customs Day here.

Finance Secretary Sumit Bose later said customs duty collection grew 6.7 per cent in December. This is much slower than the target of 14 per cent growth this year. The government had set a budgetary target of over Rs  1.87 lakh crore for collection from customs duty in 2013-14.

“It has been a satisfying year. I am happy that the customs revenue has shown a higher growth rate in the month of December, a little more than we had anticipated in the revised estimates. I am tempted to raise the revised estimate but I will not do so,” Chidambaram said.    

The finance minister also said that service tax collections in the coming years would exceed customs and excise mop-up when Goods and Services Tax is implemented.

Total indirect tax collections were pegged at over Rs  5.65 lakh crore in the Budget—an increase of 20 per cent over the previous year.