New Delhi, Jan 1 (IANS): Revenue collection under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) fell for the second straight month to Rs. 94,726 crore in December from Rs. 97,637 crore collected in November despite a rise in the number of tax returns filed.

The Finance Ministry on Tuesday said a total of 72.44 lakh GSTR-3B returns were filed till December 31, up from 69.6 lakh filed in November, bringing in Rs. 16,442 crore as Central GST (CGST), Rs. 22,459 crore as State GST (SGST), Rs. 47,936 crore as Integrated GST (IGST) and Rs 7,888 crore as Cess.

The revenue collected in December relates to transactions made in November.

The GST collections had breached the Rs 1-lakh crore-mark in October (for September) when it stood at Rs. 1,00,710 crore, after which it slided to Rs. 97,637 crore in November (for October).

"The government has settled Rs. 18,409 crore to CGST and Rs. 14,793 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement. Further, Rs. 18,000 crore has been settled from the balance IGST available with the Centre on provisional basis in the ratio of 50:50 between Centre and states," a Finance Ministry statement said.

"The total revenue earned by the Central government and the state governments after regular settlement in the month of December is Rs. 43,851 crore for CGST and Rs. 46,252 crore for the SGST," it added.