Fall in February GST collection temporary, E-way bill to give boost: Experts

The fall in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection in February is a temporary phase and the upcoming 'E-way' bill is expected to give a boost to the indirect tax revenues, economy watchers said on Tuesday.

According to the Finance Ministry on Tuesday, the total revenue received under GST for February 2018 up to March 26 has been Rs 85,174 crore from January's Rs 86,318 crore.

"It will take more time in stabilisation of GST regime before economy starts realising benefits of GST. Reform measures announced in last GST council meeting of introduction of E-way bill are likely to plug in leakages and improve collections," Devendra Kumar Pant, Chief Economist, India Ratings and Research told IANS.

M.S. Mani, Partner, Deloitte India said that GST collections appear to be entering the "stabilisation phase", although the expected revenue garnering appears to be taking more time.

"It would be logical to assume that significant amount of transition credits availed would now have been utilised, hence the collections would now progressively improve," Mani said adding that the fall in revenue collection would lead to several anti-evasion measures, and "over and above the imminent e-way bill launch on 1st April".

Abhishek Jain, Tax Partner, EY India said: "The next big hope for the government would be introduction of E-way bills with effect from April 1, which may provide a boost to GST collections."

Aditi Nayar, Principal Economist at ICRA said: "While the aggregate GST collection has recorded a sequential dip..., the daily average GST inflows adjusted for the fewer number of days in February relative to January, recorded a healthy uptick in the just-concluded month, which is an encouraging sign."

Abhishek A Rastogi, Partner, Khaitan and Co said : "There are still few days left in the month of March and that the assessees are also facing the burden of direct tax payments in the form of advance tax and TDS. The situations of late GST payments cannot be ruled out."

"The collections are expected to increase in March 2018 after composition dealers will be filing their quarterly returns," he added.

--IANS

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