Revenues from the goods and services tax (GST) in November crossed the Rs 1-lakh-crore mark after a gap of three months.

Collections rose 6 per cent year-on-year to Rs 1.03 lakh crore in November, which has been attributed to strong festival season demand.

The GST collection was Rs 95,380 crore in October this year, while it was Rs 97,637 crore November 2018.

Of the gross Rs 1,03,492 crore collected in November, central GST was Rs 19,592 crore, state GST was Rs 27,144 crore, integrated GST was Rs 49,028 crore (including Rs 20,948 crore collected on imports) and cess was Rs 7,727 crore (including Rs 869 crore collected on imports), an official statement said.

Ramaratnam Muralidharan, senior director at Deloitte India, said, “After subdued collections in the previous three months, the November collection is a shade better. However, it is too early to draw any conclusion on whether the collections are on a growth path.

“The increase may be because of the additional spending in October on the occasion of Diwali, which got reflected in the November collections. We need to wait and see for the next 2-3 months to see if the impact of better tax compliance will result in consistent higher collections.”

Abhishek Jain, tax partner at EY, said, “With the implementation of anti-evasion measures such as investigation on identified discrepancis through analytics and the recently implemented restriction on availing unmatched credits, there was a general expectation of collection rising.”

This is the eighth time since the inception of the GST in July 2017 that monthly collections have crossed the Rs one-lakh-crore mark. Also, the collection in November is the third-highest monthly mop-up, after April and March this year.

The festive season and the related spur in demand could be one key reason for the growth.

During the month, the GST collection on domestic transactions grew 12 per cent, the highest during the year. The collection on imports continued to be negative at (-)13 per cent, it added.

In April this year, the GST collection was recorded at Rs 1.13 lakh crore, while it was Rs 1.06 lakh crore in March.

The gross GST revenue collected in October was Rs 95,380 crore. In September, the collection was Rs 91,916 crore and in August it was Rs 98,202 crore..