Full FY20 GST compensation given to States

New Delhi: In a bid to provide further relief to states amid the coronavirus outbreak, the Finance Ministry has released Rs 13,806 crore as compensation for March 2020 for the states' revenue loss in the goods and services tax (GST) regime. This comes at a time when state finances are under severe stress due to the Covid-19 lockdown that has also seen the states' GST revenues falling sharply to less than half the usual levels in the months of April and May.

"Central Government has recently released GST compensation of Rs 13,806 crore to states for March 2020. Taking this amount into account, entire compensation upto 2019-20 has been released to states," the Ministry said in a statement. "The total amount of compensation released for the year 2019-20 is Rs 1,65,302 crore whereas the amount of cess collected during the year 2019-20 was Rs 95,444 crore," the statement added.