Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Tuesday urged the Revenue Department to take extra efforts to meet the budgeted indirect tax collection target for this fiscal.

This is even as he recognised that a slowing economy had made life difficult for tax collectors in achieving targets.

“This has been a difficult year for tax collections, too. As the economy slowed down, imports also slowed down, manufacturing too was subdued and, therefore, collections have been affected,” Chidambaram said at a Central Board of Excise and Customs event here.

For 2012-13, the Government had set an indirect tax collection target of Rs 5.05 lakh crore. In April-November 2012, indirect tax collections grew 16.8 per cent to Rs 2.92 lakh crore.

Chidambaram also asked the Board to focus energies on shifting to a technology-driven regime for tax collection instead of following a “heavy handed” approach.

The Finance Minister has been making a case for the Revenue Department to adopt a non-adversarial approach for tax administration and thereby avoid litigation.

“As we go forward, we should rely more on technology, non-intrusive intelligence gathering and non-adversarial tax administration,” he said, assuring that revenues will be collected in a “just and fair” manner.

Revenue Secretary Sumit Bose said the Department would stick to the fiscal targets that the Government had set. “We will collect revenues, but again in just and fair manner,”he said.

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