Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram has suggested that the Revenue Department should make extra efforts to meet indirect tax collection target as the slowing economy had made tax collection targets difficult to achieve.

Mr. Chidambaram said that economy slowed down and decline in imports and manufacturing made this fiscal a difficult year for tax collections.

Speaking at a Central Board of Excise & Customs event on Tuesday, he said, "This has been a difficult year for tax collections, too. As the economy slowed down, imports also slowed down, manufacturing too was subdued and, therefore, collections have been affected."

In April to November period of current fiscal, indirect tax collections grew 16.8 per cent to around Rs 2.92 lakh crore. The Government has target of collecting Rs 5.05 lakh crore in indirect taxes.

The Finance Minister also asked the Revenue department to concentrate its energies on shifting to a technology-driven regime for tax collection in place of pursuing a heavy handed approach. He also stressed on the need to adopt a non-adversarial approach for tax administration and thus hack chances of litigation.

Meanwhile, some economists are saying that the government may not only keep the fiscal deficit within the revised 5.3 per cent target, but actually may be able to drag it further down to 5.1 per cent.

Sonal Varma, an economist with Nomura, said the government's measures to cut spending were laudable.