Andhra sees spike in tax revenue despite Covid 

VIJAYAWADA: Despite slowdown of economic activity due to the Covid-induced lockdown in the initial months of the 2020-21 fiscal and its impact, revenue collection in the State was more than that in the 2019-20 fiscal. However, the revenue fell short of the target by over Rs 7,000 crore. The overall achievement of revenue collection stood at 85.14% as only Rs 44,009 crore was collected against the annual target of Rs 51,689 crore. However, it was 1.56% more than the collections of the last fiscal (2019-20).

GST revenue, petroleum products, liquor and professional tax come under the revenue collections by the Commercial Taxes department.As per the data of revenue collections by the end of the 2020-21 fiscal, the GST revenue (with ad-hoc and compensation received with loan of Rs 2,311 crore from the Centre) stood at Rs 26,644 crore against the annual target of Rs 27,115 crore. Though the achievement of the year stood at 98.26 per cent,  the growth over the last year is 18.79 per cent.   

Similarly, revenue from petroleum products stood at Rs 11,011 crore (88.09 per cent achievement) — 7.26 per cent growth over the last year. Similar is the case with the professional taxes, which witnessed 12.32 per cent  growth over the last year with a collection of Rs 261.01 crore against the target of Rs 294.80 crore.However, revenue from liquor fell short by 48 per cent with the collection of Rs 6,092 crore against the annual target of Rs 11,779 crore. The percentage of achievement of target in the fiscal 2020-21 stood at 51.72 per cent. This is -41.44 per cent growth over the last year (2019-20).

The officials explain that reduction of VAT on liquor despite an increase in the prices resulted in the dip in revenue. Though there was nearly a 15 per cent dip in revenue collections this year, officials say that the special drive and other initiatives taken up by the commercial tax department resulted in the achievement. The revenue collections were meagre in the first quarter because of the lockdown.

When contacted, Chief Commissioner (Commercial Taxes) Peeyush Kumar said that despite Covid, the agriculture sector, which is a major revenue contributor to Andhra Pradesh, was not affected. Similarly, the government has extended financial support through DBT to beneficiaries of various welfare schemes and it increased the purchasing power of consumers. He further said that the special drive taken up by the department also helped in the achievement.

Informing that Andhra Pradesh stood top in the table of GST collections (Business) in South India, he said AP achieved 8.83% growth. While Tamil Nadu achieved 3.78%  growth over last year, Kerala achieved 1.07% , Telangana 0.81% and Karnataka 0.18%.