NEW DELHI: Goods and Services Tax ( GST ) collections in May amounted to Rs 94,016 crore, down from April’s record Rs 1.03 lakh crore but well above the monthly average since the tax was rolled out on July 1 last year, indicating the levy was stabilising and compliance was rising.Finance secretary Hasmukh Adhia said the May GST collection was higher than the monthly average of Rs 89,885 crore in FY18. “This reflects better compliance after introduction of e-way bills,” tweeted Adhia, who is also the revenue secretary.The GST Council had introduced electronic way bills or e-way bills on April 1 for the movement of goods within states to clamp down on evasion. They are required for transport of goods over Rs 50,000.The May collection shows the economy may be recovering from GST implementation blues, experts said. “The growth in the economy in the January-March quarter has been robust and is indicative of the fact that the initial hiccups in GST implementation are now largely behind us,” said Atul Gupta, senior director, Deloitte India.India’s GDP growth beat expectations to clock 7.7% in the fourth quarter of FY18, according to official data released on Thursday.“Though the current month’s revenue collection is less compared to last month’s revenue, still the gross revenue collection in the month of May (Rs 94,016 cr) is much higher than the monthly average of GST collection in the last financial year (Rs 89,885 cr),” the ministry said in a statement. “The April revenue figure was higher because of year-end effect.”Under GST, collections in a month are for goods and services sold in the previous month as returns are filed on the 20th of the next month. April collections related to March and benefited from the year-end effect. Adhia said it was not right to compare the May collections for the month of April with that of the previous months.“As per experience of last 5 years, the average collection of taxes on goods and services during April is approx 7.1% of the annual taxes as against 11% for March. April is traditionally the month of lowest monthly collection,” he tweeted. Government has budgeted Rs 7.44 lakh crore from central GST, IGST and compensation cess. May collections are in line with the projections.In May, 6.25 million businesses filed their summary sales return GSTR-3B, more than the 6.05 million that filed in April. Experts said anti-evasion measures were beginning to yield results.“Introduction of e-way bills could be one possible reason for the increased revenue collection for April vis-a-vis the average monthly collection of around Rs 90,000 crore last year,” said Abhishek Jain, tax partner, EY India. “With the introduction of other antievasion measures like intra-state credit matching, e-way bills, TDS/TCS (tax deducted at source/tax collected at source), etc., these collections may further increase in the coming months.”Of the Rs 94,016 crore gross GST revenue in May, central GST was Rs 15,866 crore, state GST Rs 21,691crore, integrated GST Rs 49,120 crore and cess Rs 7,339 crore, the finance ministry said in a statement on Friday. As much as Rs 6,696 crore has been released to the states as GST compensation for March 2018 as of May 29. Total GST compensation to the states for FY18 has been Rs 47,844 crore, the ministry said.