India's revenue situation comfortable - Jayant Sinha

MUMBAI (Reuters) - The government is comfortable with the revenue situation due to a pickup in indirect tax collections, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said on Tuesday.

Sinha earlier on Tuesday said India's plan to cut stake in state-run companies, a key source of revenue for the government, was "challenging", as many of the firms are in the commodities sector where valuations have been hit by a downturn.

"While direct taxes are little bit below where we would like them to be, indirect taxes are in fact ahead and therefore when you consider the two together we are actually in fairly comfortable fiscal situation ?with respect to revenues," he said.

On Monday, media reports said the government's divestment department wants to more than halve its stake sale target for the current financial year to March to about 300 billion rupees ($4.6 billion).

(Reporting by Suvashree Dey Choudhury; Writing by Neha Dasgupta; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee)