New Delhi: Good news has come from the economic front for India, which is making efforts to strengthen its financial health, the country has recorded a GST collection of a whopping Rs. 1.42 lakh crore in March this year.

A release from the Union Finance Ministry claimed the GST collection has gone high by 14.7 per cent from March 2021 and a 45.6 per cent rise as against March 2020.

The increase in the collection is credited to anti-evasion measures taken by the government, the release said. It said that the strong action taken against fake billers has led to a higher collection of GST this year”.

 The average monthly gross GST collections for FY22 now stand at Rs 1.23 lakh crore, which is 30.5 per cent higher than the monthly average seen in the previous fiscal.

It may be noted that the economy witnessed an impact on tax collection due to the Covid pandemic as there was a significant drop in GST revenue at a monthly average of Rs 94,733 crore in 2020-21, which was 9.5 per cent lower than the monthly average of Rs 1.04 lakh crore in the pre-Covid period of 2019-20.

“Coupled with economic recovery, anti-evasion activities, especially action against fake billers, have been contributing to the enhanced GST. The improvement in revenue has also been due to various rate rationalisation measures undertaken by the (GST) Council to correct inverted duty structure,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The release said that the total number of e-way bills generated in February was 6.91 crore, higher than 6.88 crores seen a month ago, despite it being a shorter month, which indicates the “recovery of business activity at faster pace”.

The previous highest collection of GST revenues was in January 2022 at Rs 1.40 lakh crore. The average monthly gross GST collection for the last quarter of FY22 has been Rs 1.38 lakh crore against the average monthly collection of Rs 1.10 lakh crore, Rs 1.15 lakh crore and Rs 1.30 lakh crore in the first, second and third quarters, respectively. The Centre’s GST collection now has exceeded the revised budgetary target of Rs 5.70 lakh crore set for the previous fiscal ended March 31.