Patna, (Bihar Times): Bihar is likely to improve its collection of the central excise tax and may end up among the top ten states of the country.

According to central excise commissioner M S Badhan the revenue amounting to Rs 3,926 crore is likely to be generated as central excise in the financial year 2007-08.

He said that the department had collected Rs 2,831 crore till December 31, 2007 and the figure is likely to cross the target of the current fiscal.

In the financial year 2006-07 too the collection was quite healthy with the Patna commissionerate contributing Rs 3,400 crore as central excise. The Patna commissionerate includes Patna, Gaya, Laheriasarai (Darbhanga), Muzaffarpur and Bhagalpur.

However, things are not as good in the service tax. Against a target of Rs 240 crore in this financial year, a collection of just Rs 115 crore was made till December 2007. With just three months to go it is virtually not possible to reach the target. However, Badhan feels that the service tax collection generally goes up in the last three months of the fiscal year.

He conceded that the shifting of headquarters of some of telecom companies from Bihar to other states did affect the volume of service tax collected from the state.