After experiencing a negative growth in April this year, excise duty receipts grew by 4.4% in May 2008 to Rs 9,583 crore. This helped the government mop up 12.8% higher revenues at Rs 35,216 crore from indirect taxes in the first two months of this fiscal. The figure excludes service taxes.

Data for service tax collections available only for April shows a whopping 40% increase in collections during the month at Rs 6,093 crore, according to an official release.

Excise duty collections grew by 0.9% to Rs 15,993 crore in the first two months of this fiscal compared to the same period last year, thanks to collections picking up in May. Despite the improvement in performance compared to the previous month, the collection in May fell short of the target of 8.8% growth for the whole fiscal.

For the month of April, collections under excise duty had fallen by 3.9% to Rs 6,410 crore against Rs 6,673 crore in the same month last year. Finance minister P Chidambaram had said that meeting target of excise duty collections for this fiscal appeared to be a formidable task.

Customs duty receipts were up by 25.1% for the first two months at Rs 19,223 crore. Collections under this head grew by 25.2% at Rs 10,205 crore in May. Despite cut in Customs duty on various items to tame inflation, the government is hopeful of meeting the Customs collection target for this fiscal.

Customs duty and service tax collections are targeted to grow at 14.4% and 26.1% during the current fiscal, respectively.

This years excise duty collections target is pegged at Rs 1,37,874 crore at a time when the general cenvat duty is reduced from 16% to 14% in the budget.

Excise duty has been reduced on small cars to 12 % from 16 % and hybrid cars to 14 %. For all pharma products, the rate was cut to 8% from 16 %.