Customs mop-up set to be Rs 300 cr more

Customs collection for the current fiscal year is set to be at least Rs 300 crore more than the revised estimate of Rs 64,215 crore.

According to officials in the revenue department, the collections from March 1 to 23 indicate that the mop-up from the 11 major Customs locations in the country has touched Rs 4,818 crore during the month compared with Rs 4,361 crore in the corresponding period last year.

The eleven major customs locations include Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Mumbai and Vishakapatnam.

The department is reviewing the collections on a daily basis with special focus on the major Customs locations. Officials said the mop-up for March from these locations was expected to be around Rs 6,800 crore against the remaining target of Rs 6,784 crore needed to achieve the revised estimate for 2005-06.

The collection from the non-major locations is expected to be around Rs 200-300 crore, which will take the total collection to Rs 7,100 crore for March.

Collection during February had touched Rs 4,678 crore, which was nearly 4 per cent lower than the mop-up of Rs 4,867 crore during the month in the corresponding period last year.

Officials said the decline in Customs collection during February was not unusual as firms usually wait for Budget announcements in the last two weeks of February for changes in the import duties.

"Since there was a lot of speculation that the government would bring down the peak import duty from 15 to 10 per cent, several importers chose to wait for the Budget to be announced, and that caused a temporary blip in collections," an official said.

The finance ministry had revised the Customs collection target upwards by around Rs 10,000 crore compared with Rs 53,182 crore projected in the Budget estimates.