Duty cut, commodity price may put pressure on custom and excise collection

Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) chairman Vivek Johri on Thursday said that he is hopeful of maintaining average monthly GST collection of Rs 1.35 lakh crore, however duty cut and rising commodity price may put pressure on custom and excise duty collection.

While he attributed the collection to bounce back in economy, better compliance and use of technology in plugging revenue gaps, he also attributed it to inflation and high oil prices.

"Revenues will be under pressure on the Customs side because of rising commodity prices. Excise will take a hit because of the duty cut,” Johri said while addressing a FICCI conclave.

He said that the entire exercise of revenue augmentation over the past two years has been driven by data analytics and data triangulation.

"By implementing data triangulation with DGFT (Directorate General of Foreign Trade) and income-tax department, we have culled out risky taxpayers and have suspended their registrations. Wrongdoers and those who were gaming the system have been culled out,” Johri said.

He added that the CBIC is also focussing on revenue loss due to smuggling and illicit trade.

“At CBIC, we are going aggressively against illicit trade in these goods. In 2021-22, we seized 92,000 kg of narcotics worth Rs 17,400 crore, during this period, we also seized 14 crore cigarette sticks," Johri said.

To curb such trade, the CBIC has ramped up the use of technology in their operations with 22 cargo scanners at 16 locations to ensure 100% scanning of all containers coming into the country through gateway ports, Johri added.