New Delhi, Sept. 10 -- The Centre is again defending the methodology behind a headline economic growth number, this time for goods and services tax (GST) collections, after former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg questioned the strength of the reported increase.

Gross GST collections rose 14.8% year-on-year in August, while cumulative collections during April-August grew 11%, according to government data released 1 September. But former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg, in a 9 September post on X , argued that including the compensation cess collected in the year-earlier period would bring five-month growth down to 4.08%.

At the heart of the dispute is the comparable tax base. The Centre excludes compensation cess from both ...