The government is on its way to achieve the revenue collection and fiscal deficit targets for 2017-18.

While announcing the latest GST and direct tax collection figures, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said in a press briefing that the government would not only stick to the 3.5 per cent fiscal deficit target but also the revised tax revenue collection figures for 2017-18.

The government's confidence comes from the direct tax collection figures with the provisional net Direct Tax collections showed a 17.1 per cent jump to Rs.9.95 lakh crore. This is 101.5 per cent of the budget estimates of Rs 9.8 lakh crore and 99 per cent of the revised estimates Rs 10.05 lakh crore.

Central Board of Direct Taxation (CBDT) chairman Sushil Chandra said that they are confident of achieving the revised estimates as well.

The GST collection figure for February has also shown a jump from the previously announced Rs 86,000 crore till March 25. The revenue secretary informed the media that in the last 6 days of March, additional Rs 3,000 crore were collected from taxpayers.

The GST collection figure for February now stands at Rs 89,264 crore. Overall in the eight months since July, the government has collected Rs 7.17 lakh crore in GST averaging Rs 89,700 crore a month.

The revenue secretary said that they are confident of achieving the revised GST target for 2017-18 as well. In future, with e-way bill and other anti-evasion mechanism in place, Adhia said that the GST collection would only go up.

Meanwhile, the inter-state e-way bill which came into effect from 1 April is functioning smoothly without any major glitches, said the revenue secretary. He informed that on first day, total 2.59 lakh e-way Bills were generated on the e-way bill portal. Till 3:00 pm on Monday, 2.89 lakh e-way bills were been generated. A total of 11.18 lakh taxpayers have registered on e-Way Bill Portal till date.

The first set of states would implement the intra-state e-way bill from 15 April.