Indirect tax collections up

A healthy 4.4 per cent growth in excise duty collections in the month of
May after a decline in collections in April is the highlight of the data
released by the Finance Ministry here today. For the month of April, excise duty collections had fallen to Rs 6,410 crore against Rs 6,673 crore in the same month last year. However, the growth in excise duty collections in May fell short of the target of 8.8 per cent growth for the whole fiscal.

Excise duty collections for the first two months of this fiscal grew by 0.9
per cent at Rs 15,993 crore compared to Rs 15,848 crore for the same period last year.

Customs duty collections registered a growth of 25.1 per cent for the first
two months of the fiscal at Rs 19,223 crore, as compared to Rs 15,848 crore during the same period last year. Collections under this head grew by 25.2 per cent at Rs 10,205 crore in the month of May.

Data for service tax collections are available only for the month April and
the collection under this head grew by a whopping 40 per cent at Rs 6,093 crore in that month. Customs duty and service tax collections are targeted to grow at 14.4 per cent and 26.1 per cent during the current fiscal, respectively.