INDIRECT TAX COLLECTIONS SLOWS; EXCISE DOWN 15 PC

 Hit by double whammy of duty cuts and financial slowdown, government's kitty from excise and customs continued to worsen, with the collections from these two indirect levies declining by 15 per cent and 0.8 per cent in November respectively. While excise duty collections fell from Rs 10,065 crore in November 2007 to Rs 8,556 crore in the same month this year, customs duty mop up was down from Rs 9,005 crore to Rs 8,931 crore, the government said in a statement issued here today. For the first eight months of this fiscal, excise duty collections went down 1.5 per cent to Rs 73,878 crore from Rs 75,013 crore. Customs duty collections, however, managed to grow by 13 per cent to Rs 75,551 crore from Rs 66,838 crore during April-November. The government is expected to bear a revenue loss of about Rs 40,475 crore from the post budget duty cuts, according to the Central Board of Excise and Customs Chairman P C Jha. The revenue loss includes the recent across the board four per cent excise cut given by the government as a fiscal stimulus to boost the sagging economic growth. It may be noted here that excise collection had also fallen by 8.7 per cent in October while the total collection in the April-October period this year had gone up by merely 0.6 per cent. Although, the total mop up from excise and customs were up 5.3 per cent to Rs 1,49,429 crore in the April-November period this fiscal from Rs 1,41,851 crore in the last fiscal.