The Finance Ministry may fall short of the Revised Estimate for direct taxes collections in 2009-10 even as the collection level is understood to have surpassed the Budget Estimate for the last fiscal.

However, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) maintains that the revised estimate of Rs 3.87 lakh crore could well be within its reach as the numbers up to end-March were still being collated.

I don't have the latest direct taxes numbers with me right now. But it is well above the Budget Estimate figure, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, Union Finance Minister, told reporters on the sidelines of a SIDBI function here on Friday. He was responding to a question on the possibility of Government falling short of the revised estimate on the direct taxes front.

In Budget 2010-11, the Finance Minister had pegged the revised estimate for direct taxes at Rs 3.87 lakh crore, up from Rs 3.70 lakh crore at the Budget estimate level.

During the middle of 2009-10, the CBDT was asked to scale up its revenue mobilisation target to Rs 4 lakh crore. The slowdown in economic growth had impacted Government's revenue collection efforts.

In his address at the SIDBI function, Mr Mukherjee had said that he expected the economy to grow 7.2 per cent in 2009-10. This, he said, was impressive by global standards. I am optimistic that the growth rate will climb back to 8.25-8.75 per cent in 2010-11. The Finance Minister also expressed confidence that the measures outlined in this year's Budget would revive private investment and put the economy back on 9 per cent growth path.