Gandhinagar: Finance Minister Nitin Patel while presenting his budget for financial year 2017-18 today in the assembly said Value Added Tax(VAT) revenue for Gujarat government saw increase due to Central government’s demonetization move.

Sharing the figures, Nitin patels aid VAT revenue has been up by 21.83% in November – January period of demonetization move.

He said, while VAT revenue in year 2015-16 during November to January period was Rs 10,198 crore, the revenue in same period in 2016-17 was Rs 12,424 crore.

It should be mentioned here that the Prime Minister had announced demonetization move on November 8 and scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1000 value old currency notes. However payment of taxes was allowed in scrapped currency notes.

Meanwhile, Patel in his today’s budget speech made no change to VAT in view of likely implementation of Goods and Service Tax(GST) from July this year.

DeshGujarat