India’s gross Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue in September crossed ₹ 2 lakh crore, registering a 14.7% year-on-year increase, government data released on Thursday showed.
“One thing worth noting is that GST on imports is growing much faster than domestic collections. The government deserves credit for the work done so far under the production linked incentive schemes, which have laid a solid base for domestic manufacturing. This suggests a meaningful part of the headline buoyancy is coming from imports. Sustained domestic growth will be important to watch from here.
Pratik Jain, partner at Price Waterhouse & Co LLP, said: “GST collections remain strong, but it’s interesting to see that domestic revenues grew 10.1% compared with almost 26% growth in import GST. At the same time, cumulative refunds are up nearly 19%, which is a positive signal for businesses from a liquidity standpoint. With refunds rising 21.4% year-on-year to ₹ 1,04,357 crore during the first half of 2026-27, net collections in April-September 2026 stood at over ₹ 10.66 lakh crore, registering 10.4% growth from over ₹ 9.65 lakh crore in the corresponding period of 2025, according to provisional data.
But the import numbers suggest it is time to recalibrate some of these schemes, so that the gains from this groundwork are fully realized,” said Saurabh Agarwal, tax partner at EY India.
MS Mani, partner at Deloitte India, said: “Increased focus on complicated and increasing number GST audits undertaken this year appear to be yielding results in the form of the gross monthly GST collection, despite last year being on higher GST rates compared to the current year.”
Strong revenue flows would allow the GST Council, at its next meeting scheduled for October 7, to decide on several issues, including relaxation of input tax credit restrictions, “without being unduly worried on the impact of such measures” on GST collections, according to Mani.
