Allaying fears of sluggish economic growth impacting tax collections, Central Board ofDirect Taxes ChairmanPrakash Chandra today exuded confidence that revenue targets for 2011-12 will be achieved.

"We have got no indication (of slowdown impacting revenue collections). I am confident that direct tax collection target for the current fiscal would be achieved," Chandra told reporters here when asked whether decelerating economic growth would impact tax collections.

He said, "Present indications are that (direct) tax revenue (collections) are growing at over 23 per cent. We will certainly reach our targets".

The gross direct tax collections in April-June this year were up by 23.91 per cent at Rs 1,04,136 crore as against Rs 84,041 crore during the same period a year-ago.

However, due to hefty increase in tax refunds which more than doubled in the first quarter of the current fiscal, net direct tax collections dropped by almost 17 per cent during the same period to Rs 57,268 crore.

The net direct direct tax collections stood at Rs 68,675 crore in the same period last fiscal.

The Centre expects to collect over Rs 9.32 lakh crore tax revenues this fiscal, about 24.98 per cent up from the previous year.

In the Budget speech, Mukherjee had pegged economic growth for the current fiscal at around 9 per cent but two-months later theRBI came out with a lower projection of about 8 per cent GDP growth.

The central bank has hiked key policy rates 11 times since March 2010 to curb demand and tame inflation.

The high interest rate regime has impacted the country's industrial growth rate, which shrunk by more than half to 6.3 per cent during April.

Showing signs of sluggishness in the economy, factory output fell to 5.6 per cent in May this year from 8.5 per cent in the same month last year, mainly due to the poor performance of the manufacturing and mining sectors. (Economic Times)