India's Goods and services tax (GST) collections hit Rs 1.31 trillion in November, the second-highest in a month since the country introduced this indirect tax system in 2017.

       The highest monthly collection, at close to Rs 1.40 trillion, had come in April this year.

       GST revenues in November were 25 per cent higher than those in the same month last year and 27 per cent more than the corresponding month in the pre-Covid year 2019-20.

       The collections were also 1.1 per cent higher than the Rs 1.30 trillion collected in October this year.

       A finance ministry statement said the GST collection in November was second only to that in April 2021, which had got a push from year-end revenues. It was also higher than last month’s collection, which had included the impact of returns required to be filed quarterly, it said.

       "This is very much in line with the trend in economic recovery," it said. Official data released on Tuesday showed that the economy grew 8.4 per cent during the second quarter of the current financial year. It also surpassed the corresponding pre-covid period of 2019-20 by a tad 0.3 per cent. In the previous quarter, economic growth had declined 9.2 per cent compared to the pre-covid period, even as it rose 20.1 per cent year-on-year.

       GST collections crossed Rs 1.3 trillion for the second straight month. This is very much in line with the trend in economic recovery, the finance ministry said in a statement here. Of the total GST collections, the Central GST stood at Rs 23,978 crore, state GST at ？ 31,127 crore, integrated GST at ？ 66,815 crore and cess at Rs 9,606 crore. IGST included Rs 32,165 crore from import of goods and cess included Rs 653 crore from inbound shipments.

       During the month, revenues from import of goods was 43 per cent higher and the revenues from domestic transactions (including import of services) are 20 per cent higher than the revenues from these sources during the same month last year.

       The government has settled ？ 27,273 crore to CGST and ？ 22,655 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement. The total revenue of the Centre and the states after regular settlements in November stood at Rs 51,251 crore for CGST and Rs 53,782 crore for the SGST.

       The central government has also released Rs 17,000 crore to states and union territories towards GST compensation November three.

       The ministry said the recent trend of high GST revenues has been a result of various policy and administrative measures that have been taken in the past to improve compliance. "Central tax enforcement agencies, along with the state counterparts have detected large tax evasion cases, mainly relating to fake invoices, with the help of various IT tools developed by GSTN that use the return, invoice and e-way bill data to find suspicious taxpayers," it said.

       A large number of initiatives undertaken in the last one year like, enhancement of system capacity, nudging non-filers after last date of filing of returns, auto-population of returns, blocking of e-way bills and passing of input tax credit for non-filers has led to consistent improvement in the filing of returns over the last few months, the ministry said.