Collections under the goods and services tax in January rose to Rs 1.02 lakh crore — the second highest monthly mop-up after April, the finance ministry said on Saturday. Buoyed by this number, the government seems to have assumed a higher GST collection in its budget math.

“The total gross GST revenue collected in January 2019 is Rs 1,02,503 crore, of which central GST is Rs 17,763 crore, state GST (SGST) is Rs 24,826 crore, integrated GST (IGST) is Rs 51,225 crore and cess is Rs 8,690 crore,” the ministry said in a statement.

This is the third time in the current fiscal that revenues from the goods and services tax (GST) have crossed the Rs 1- lakh-crore mark. In April and October too, the collections surpassed this milestone. The tax collection is a significant increase from the collection of Rs 94,725 crore in December 2018, and 14 per cent higher than January 2018 collection of Rs 89,825 crore.

Pratik Jain, partner and leader, indirect tax, PwC India said: “It is interesting to see that a substantial growth has been projected on central GST collections in 2019-20 over the current year, whereas the overall growth in collection in 2018-19 has been around 8 per cent over 2017-18.

“Achieving this ambitious growth target would call for substantial expansion in the tax base, requiring stringent measures to plug the tax leakages.”