Monday, February 25, 2008

Indirect Taxes Likely To Surpass Budget Targets, Says FM

New Delhi: The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, on Feb 24 expressed optimism that the Revenue Department would surpass the budget targets on indirect taxes for 2007-08 and get 1 per cent of excess collections as rewards for this year too. Despite slow growth in excise duty mop ups, this optimism comes on the back of buoyant customs duty collections so far in the current fiscal.

For 2007-08, the Government had pegged the indirect tax collections target at about Rs 2.8 lakh crore. In both 2005-06 and 2006-07, the CBEC exceeded budget targets to the tune of Rs 8,615 crore and Rs 11,300 crore respectively and got a reward of 1 per cent of the excess collections, which amounted close to Rs 200 crore.The Finance Minister''s observations on surpassing budget estimates for 2007-08 came less than a week before he would present the Union budget for 2008-09 on Friday. Achievement of excise duty collections target of Rs 1,30,220 crore for 2007-08 is going to be a major challenge for the Revenue Department if one were to go by the excise duty collections till end-January this fiscal.

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