ESIC payroll data shows more than 19 lakh employees were added in November

Representative Image

More than 19 lakh employees were added in November 2019, according to data of the Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) payroll data.

A total of 19,62,804 employees registered in November, up from 16,90,599 employees added in October 2019. This is the second-highest number of employees added in 2019, the highest was in July with 19,86,360 employees.

More than 12 lakh employees stopped paying their contribution towards ESIC in November, the lowest in the year.

The numbers are substantiated by the Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection data for the month of November.

According to November's GST data,  November's collection was up by 6 percent.  Reversing a two-month declining trend, November's collection stood at Rs 1.03 lakh crore. GST collections were Rs 97,637 crore in November 2017 and Rs 95,380 crore in October 2019.

December's GST collections crossed the Rs 1 lakh crore benchmark for the second consecutive month. In December, Rs 1.03 lakh crore was collected as GST.

Both together show an uptick in consumption and ease of compliance. This comes at the backdrop of government's first advance estimate pegging economic growth rate for 2019-20 at 5 percent, slower than the 2018-19 expansion rate of 6.8 percent.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on January 20 lowered India’s economic growth forecast to 4.8 per cent for this fiscal year owing to the crisis in the non-banking financial sector and weak rural demand.