GST collections cross Rs 1.15 l cr mark in April
GST collections, the barometer of economic activity in India, have crossed Rs 1 lakh crore mark at a stretch for the last six months (Oct'20 to Mar'21).
image for illustrative purpose
Mumbai, May 01: GST collections, the barometer of economic activity in India, have crossed Rs 1 lakh crore mark at a stretch for the last six months (Oct'20 to Mar'21).
After clocking record collections in Mar'21 month (Rs 1.24 lakh crore), our internal simulation model indicates that Apr'21 GST collections will be in the range of Rs 1.15-1.20 lakh crore, a report by Ecowrap, the research arm of SBI said.
This will be quite impressive given the fact that during April most of the states imposed partial lockdowns. Also, it is heartening to note that despite the curbs due to the second wave, the All India GST E-way bills till 25 April have reached 4.89 crore and we estimate it to cross 5.5 crore comfortably, given the past trends.
According to Soumya Kanti Ghosh, group chief economic advisor to SBI, "We believe that any disruption in GST collections will be transient and the states will have comfortable SGST collections. If we look at last year trend, given the SGST collection, allocation of IGST to states and Cess amount, it is around 89 per cent of the budgeted numbers of Rs 6.5 lakh crore. There is a substantial portion of IGST which is unallocated. If the 50:50 distribution takes place, then states will be only short by around Rs 6,000 crore, which is quite impressive given the fact that we were amidst a pandemic and stricter lockdown measures were imposed last year."
Meanwhile, the demand for work by households under MGNREGA increased by 92 per cent to 2.57 crore households in Apr'21 (highest in any April since compilation of the data started in 2013) so far, against 1.34 crore in Apr'20. This indicates the extent of reverse migration from the lockdown states to their native states.
