India’s merchandise exports in November rose to $29.88 billion, higher by 26.5 per cent on a year-on-year basis, preliminary data showed on Wednesday. Exports in November 2020 stood at $23.62 billion.

According to the data furnished by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, last month’s exports rose by 15.93 per cent over November 2019.

“Value of non-petroleum exports in November 2021 was $26.06 billion, registering a positive growth of 18.1 per cent over non-petroleum exports of $22.06 billion in November 2020 and a positive growth of 18.69 per cent over non-petroleum exports of $21.95 billion in November 2019.”

The value of non-petroleum and non-gems and jewellery exports rose to $23.66 billion, registering a positive growth of 22.16 per cent over November 2020.

As per the data, India’s merchandise imports last month increased by 57.18 per cent to $53.15 billion over $33.81 billion in November 2020 and 37.96 per cent over $38.52 billion reported for the corresponding month of 2019.

“Value of non-petroleum imports was $38.47 billion in November 2021 with a positive growth of 39.9 per cent over non-petroleum imports of $27.5 billion in November 2020 and a positive growth of 40.12 per cent over non-petroleum imports of $27.45 billion in November 2019.”

“Value of non-oil, non-GJ (gold, silver & Precious metals) imports was $32.02 billion in November 2021 with a positive growth of 41.53 per cent over non-oil and non-GJ imports of $22.63 billion in November 2020 and a positive growth of 42.72 per cent over non-oil and non-GJ imports of $22.44 billion in November 2019.”

Consequently, India’s trade deficit last month widened by 128.30 per cent YoY to $23.27 billion from $10.19 billion while it increased by 82.48 per cent when compared to $12.75 billion reported for November 2019. India’s GST collection rose on both sequential and year-on-year basis in November.

The gross GST collection rose to Rs 1,31,526 crore last month, and it was the second straight month when the gross GST collection crossed Rs1.30 lakh crore.

Besides, the GST revenue for November 2021 was 25 per cent higher than the corresponding period of last year and 27 per cent over the like month of 2019-20. As per the Ministry of Finance, out of the total gross collection, CGST’s share was Rs23,978 crore, SGST was Rs31,127 crore, IGST about Rs66,815 crore and cess was Rs9,606 crore.

“The GST revenues for November 2021 have been the second highest ever since the introduction of GST, second only to that in April 2021, which related to year-end revenues and higher than last month’s collection, which also included the impact of returns required to be filed quarterly,” the ministry said.

“This is very much in line with the trend in economic recovery.”  It also said that the recent trend of high GST revenues has been a result of various policy and administrative measures that have been taken in the past to improve compliance.

“Central tax enforcement agencies, along with the state counterparts have detected large tax evasion cases, mainly cases relating to fake invoices, with the help of various IT tools developed by ‘GSTN’ that use the return, invoice and ‘e-way bill’ data to find suspicious taxpayers.

“A large number of initiatives undertaken in the last one year like, enhancement of system capacity, nudging non-filers after last date of filing of returns, auto-population of returns, blocking of ‘e-way bills’ and passing of input tax credit for non-filers has led to consistent improvement in the filing of returns over the last few months.”

ICRA Chief Economist, Aditi Nayar, said: “The November 2021 GST collections are somewhat lower than what we had expected, even as the pace of YoY expansion is robust.

“We were hopeful that the GST collections in November 2021 would exceed the prevailing highest collections recorded in April 2021, given the all-time high generation of e-way bills during October 2021.”

Looking ahead, Nayar said collections may dip in December 2021, as suggested by the deceleration in the daily average ‘e-way bill’ generation in the first three weeks of November 2021.

“Nevertheless, we expect CGST collections to rise to Rs5.8 trillion in FY2022, exceeding the FY2022 BE by Rs500 billion.” Meanwhile the India’s April-October budgetary fiscal deficit has reached 36.3 per cent of the FY22 target.

As per the data furnished by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA), the fiscal deficit -- the difference between revenue and expenditure -- for the April-October 2021-22 period stood at Rs 547,026 crore, or 36.3 per cent of the budget estimates (BE).

The FY22 deficit has been pegged at Rs15.06 lakh crore. Besides, the CGA data showed that the fiscal deficit during the corresponding months of the previous fiscal was 119.7 per cent of that year’s target.

The Central government’s total expenditure stood at Rs1,826,725 crore (52.4 per cent of BE) while total receipts were Rs1,279,699 crore (64.7 per cent of BE).

ICRA Chief Economist Aditi Nayar said: “We estimate the total expenditure to overshoot the FY2022 BE by Rs1.3-1.5 trillion, based on the net outgo related to ‘First Supplementary Demand for Grants’, recent enhancement in food subsidy outgo towards the ‘PMGKAY’, increase in fertiliser subsidy for the rabi season, and the likely enhancement in the allocation for the ‘MGNREGA’ and the new export benefit ‘RoDTEP’ scheme.”