We’ve cut rates but you can’t miss goals, India tells taxmen

Bloomberg

India’s finance ministry has delivered a challenge to its revenue collectors: meet tax targets despite $20 billion of corporate tax cuts.
Through a video conference on December 16, officials were exhorted to meet the direct tax mop-up target of 13.4 trillion rupees ($187 billion), a government official told reporters. Collection in the eight months to November grew at 5% from a year earlier, against the desired 17%.
The missive shows prime minister Narendra Modi’s urgent need to buoy public finances in a slowing economy where April-November tax collections were half the amount budgeted. Authorities withheld some payments to states and have capped ministries’ expenditure as the fiscal deficit ballooned beyond target.
The government’s efforts to maintain its deficit goal goes against advice from some quarters, including central bank Governor Shaktikanta Das, who urged more spending to spur economic growth.
India’s gross domestic product grew 4.5% in the quarter ended September, the slowest pace in more than six years as both consumption and investments cooled in the nation.