True: India's gross GST collection in January 2022 was the highest since the inception of the tax.

By: Varun Kumar
February 4 2022

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January 2022 had the highest gross Goods and Services Tax revenue compared to figures from previous years since 2017. In the 2022 budget speech made on February 1, 2022, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, "The gross GST collections for the month of January 2022 are ₹1,40,986 crores which is the highest since the inception of GST." This assertion is accurate. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is an indirect tax introduced in July 2017, levied on the supply of goods and services in India. According to the Ministry of Finance, the GST revenue for January 2018 stood at ₹86,318 crores and ₹1,02,503 crore in January 2019. According to the Central Board of Indirect Taxes And Customs (CBIT), as of January 31, the gross GST revenue collected in January 2022 was ₹1,38,394 crores, of which Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) was ₹24,674 crores, State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) was ₹32,016 crores, Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) was ₹72,030 crores, with the Cess amounting to ₹9,674 crores. However, during the 2022 budget speech on February 1, the finance minister says that the ₹1,40,986 crore figure she was quoting was an updated figure for January 2022 because she received the information that morning. She asserted that it was not part of her speech originally. Compared with January 2020, the revenue for January 2022 is 15 percent higher and 25 percent higher than the GST revenues in January 2020. The gross GST revenue collected in April 2021 was ₹1,41,384 crores, according to the Goods and Services Tax Council. However, according to an official reply to a question in Lok Sabha by Union Minister of State for Finance Shri Pankaj Chaudhary in November 2021, the April 2021 figure stood at ₹1,39,708 crores. This makes the revenue collection from January 2022 the highest since the introduction of GST in 2017. It is to be noted that the government often provides updated figures in speeches, meetings, or Lok Sabha questions and answers. The revision of such figures is often not highlighted. Hence different figures are cited on different occasions referring to the same period. UPDATE 4/2/2022: We have changed the rating from "Partly True" to "True." The previous version of this fact check referred to official GST collection figures published by the GST Council initially for the months of April 2021 and January 2022 and we gave a partly true judgement based on these official figures. However, it has recently come to our notice that the government revised its original figure and published it in a November 2021 release. This indeed shows that the figure for January is the highest which makes the finance minister's assertion true.