Impact of COVID-19 enforced lockdown would be known in Aug: Assn

Chennai, Jul 1 (): Consortium of Indian Associations on Wednesday cautioned that the impact of COVID- 19 on micro, small and medium enterprises would be known only in August and the GST collection should be at least Rs 1.75 lakh crore in June.

Consortium of Indian Associations' convenor K E Raghunathan said the impact of COVID-19 on the MSME industry would be known in August as many units would execute the orders in June and July.

"Unless fresh orders arrive, August functionality (of these units) will be worse. The worst will be felt from August to December as demand will be very low," he said in a statement.

He said when the micro, small and medium enterprises suspended operations since March 25 due to the COVID-19 enforced lockdown, the units had orders which would have been completed by March 31 coinciding with the end of the financial year.

"The GST collection in June should have been at least Rs 1.75 lakh crore as we had 65 days of invoicing", he said.

The government released data on GST revenue collection on Wednesday which stood at Rs 90,917 crore in June 2020, up from Rs 62,009 crore mopped up in May and Rs 32,294 crore in April.

However, on a year-on-year basis, the GST was nine per cent lower while it was 62 per cent down in May and fell 28 per cent in April. VIJ SS