A sharp rise in both direct and indirect tax collections in the first quarter of this fiscal year appears to have given the Centre, which has some heavy spending lined up, a bit of elbow room, although the data set comes with some caveats. According to the data released by the Finance Ministry on Friday, the tax kitty seems to have swelled up to over Rs 3.23-lakh crore during the quarter. While indirect tax collections jumped 30.8 per cent between April and June 2016 to Rs 1,99,790 crore, net direct tax receipts are estimated to have grown by 24.79 percent to Rs 1.24-lakh crore in the period. However, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia clarified that if the additional resource mobilisation measures, including on fuel, are factored out, the indirect tax collections grew only 10.2 per cent. The sharpest rise was in Central excise collections, which grew 50.1 percent to Rs 91,225 crore in the first quarter from Rs 60,787 crore a year ago. The gross tax collection target is pegged at Rs 16,30,888 crore, which marks a 12.5 percent rise over the Budgeted Rs 14,49,490 crore last fiscal.