Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee commended the efforts and professional competence of the income tax (I-T) department in handling the Vodafone tax dispute efficiently in all forums.

At a review meeting held in Mumbai yesterday in which all chief commissioners of income tax, director-general of income tax (inv), commissioners of income tax at Mumbai, and chairman, CBDT, SSN Moorthy, were present, Mukherjee exhorted the tax officers to put their best foot forward to achieve the budget collection target fixed for the Mumbai region.

A presentation was made by the chief commissioner of income tax, Mumbai, PP Srivastava, in the course of which he expressed optimism that the tax collection target for this fiscal would be met, the department said in a press release

The I-T department expects the Rs2,500 crore in the Vodafone case to be collected, the release said.

Advance tax in the Mumbai region has been growing at 18% and with the TDS collection now catching up and the Rs2,500 crore that the department expects to collect in the Vodafone case, the budget collection target would be met from the Mumbai region, Srivastava said.

In FY 06, the collection from the Mumbai region was Rs53,164 crore while this fiscal, the target is Rs1,50,480 crore.

The collection from the Mumbai region has been targeted to increase three-fold in a span of five-years.

Mukherjee said that the Mumbai region should not find it difficult to meet the collection target, given the high GDP growth trajectory into which the country's economy has catapulted itself.

The minister called upon the income tax department to draw plans for training its manpower and for capacity-building so as to be able to implement the direct tax code (DTC) in its true spirit.

The department needed to reinvent itself to meet the challenges to be faced while implementing the DTC, he said.

The department should concentrate on its core functions of tax enforcement and recovery, tax-payer awareness and education and on upcoming tools like data-mining, risk-profiling and risk assessment, he said.

Mukherjee also expressed satisfaction at the department's efforts in filing almost all of its appeals on time in the Mumbai region in this fiscal, the release said.

He exhorted the officers to maintain their efforts in this direction and directed that all appeals should be filed on time in the times to come.