GST collections in October have crossed the Rs 1 lakh crore mark, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday. The revenue from goods and services tax (GST) in September was Rs 94,442 crore.

GST mop-up had crossed the Rs 1 lakh crore mark for the first time in April and since then it has remained above the Rs 90,000 crore level.

GST collections for October 2018 have crossed Rs 1 lakh crore. The success of GST is lower rates, lesser evasion, higher compliance, only one tax and negligible interference by taxation authorities, Jaitley tweeted.

The Finance Ministry had targeted monthly GST collections to be Rs 1 lakh crore for this fiscal.

The collections stood at Rs 94,016 crore in May, Rs 95,610 crore in June, Rs 96,483 crore in July, Rs 93,960 crore in August and Rs 94,442 crore in September.  Meanwhile,

The country's manufacturing sector activity improved in October, as firms scaled up production and employment levels amid strong rise in new business order flows, a monthly survey said Thursday.

The Nikkei India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index strengthened from 52.2 in September to 53.1 in October as new orders and production increased at the quickest rate in four months.

This is the 15th consecutive month that the manufacturing PMI remained above the 50-point mark. In PMI parlance, a print above 50 means expansion, while a score below that denotes contraction.

New orders increased at a sharp rate during October and panellists attributed this rise to successful advertising efforts, strengthening underlying demand and competitive price-setting. The rise in new order flows was the fastest since June.

"A combination of domestic and foreign orders fuelled the upturn in overall activity, although export orders displayed the slowest expansion since July, total new work rose at the sharpest pace since mid-year," said Pollyanna De Lima, Principal Economist at IHS Markit and author of the report.

Manufacturers stepped up hiring in October to meet rising demand conditions; and job-creation during the month was the strongest since last December.

Notwithstanding that Indian manufacturers were confident that output will be higher over the course of the next year and they increased their marketing activity and investment in research and development, the level of optimism was stymied by concerns towards future market conditions.

"Goods producers see challenges and uncertainties ahead, which in turn translated into the weakest degree of optimism seen in 20 months," Lima said.

On the price front, there was upward inflationary pressure amid reports of higher prices for chemicals, energy and metals, average cost burdens increased and some manufacturers passed part of the additional cost burden on to their clients by hiking their charges.

"However, the rate of selling price inflation was mild, in the context of historical survey data," the survey noted.