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India's corporate tax collections must be looked at over a longer period of time and the full-year numbers are likely to be in line with budget estimates, the country's economic affairs secretary said on Thursday.
"We should not look at few months' data and try to find a long-term trend over there... my sense is that whatever numbers are there in terms of budget estimates and revenues, those will be realised," Ajay Seth told reporters.
Corporate tax collections between April and July fell 10% to 1.76 trillion Indian rupees ($21.20 billion) from a year earlier, government data showed.
This is despite healthy profit growth reported by listed Indian companies, said Madhavi Arora, economist at Emkay Global, in a note earlier this month. While weak collections raise concerns about possible fiscal stress, they should smoothen out later in the year, Arora had said.
The Indian government is targeting a fiscal deficit of 5.9% of GDP for financial year 2023-24.
