He, however, expressed confidence that the receipts in March would be better that last year’s performance as the lockdown had marred collections in the last 15 days of the previous year.
Speaking to FE, a state government official said that the collections had mainly gone down only in excise and the reason for that is that while every year the licence renewal for liquor vends is done in February, this year it was done in January.After six months of steady rise in revenue collections, the Uttar Pradesh government has hit a speed-breaker, with its own revenue collection going down to Rs 2,018 crore on year in February.
According to the finance department data accessed by FE, the state collected a total revenue of Rs 11,291.78 crore in February 2021, a drop of nearly 15% from Rs 13,309.92 crore collected a year ago. Against the target of Rs 13,775.72 crore set for the month, the state has been able to collect 82% of the revenue.
The dip is mainly due to the sharp decline in excise collections. While the collections in February 2020 stood at Rs 4,260.89 crore, it came down to Rs 2,152.75 crore in February 2021, a dip of Rs 2,108.14 crore. The target for the month was Rs 3,560 crore.
Apart from excise, the GST collection, too, saw a decline of Rs 334.09 crore – from Rs 4,981.12 crore to Rs 4,647.03 crore, while the transport revenue registered a dip of Rs 99.80 crore, from Rs 654.38 crore last year to Rs 554.58 crore.
However, VAT, stamp and registration and mining have posted a growth. While VAT collection has gone up by Rs 244.41 crore, stamp and registration went up by Rs 262 crore.
Speaking to FE, a state government official said that the collections had mainly gone down only in excise and the reason for that is that while every year the licence renewal for liquor vends is done in February, this year it was done in January. “Renewal of liquor licences fetches about Rs 2,000 crore every year. Since it was done in January this year, revenue collections for that month had shot up by Rs 2,796 crore over last year, mainly because of a surge in excise collection,” he said, adding that this is the first time in the past six months that the revenue receipts have shown a downtrend trend.
He, however, expressed confidence that the receipts in March would be better that last year’s performance as the lockdown had marred collections in the last 15 days of the previous year. “We hope to see better collections in March this year, and though the year’s collections will fall short of the target due to the pandemic and the resultant lockdown, we have done better than many states,” he said.
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