Though the final numbers have not come in and no official confirmation is available, the first installment figures are way ahead of last year's, according to sources.

Tata Steel [Get Quote] has paid an advance tax of Rs 265 crore (Rs 2.65 billion) for the first quarter as against Rs 160 crore (Rs 1.6 billion) in the corresponding quarter last year.

Reliance has paid Rs 124 crore (Rs 50 crore) and the Aditya Birla Group's Hindalco [Get Quote] paid Rs 65 crore (Rs 39 crore).

State Bank of India [Get Quote] is believed to have paid an advance tax of Rs 280 crore (Rs 2.8 billion) as against Rs 234 crore (Rs 2.34 billion) and ICICI Bank [Get Quote] doubled its payment to Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion).

Among other companies, Bajaj Auto [Get Quote] paid Rs 52 crore (Rs 40 crore), Mahindra & Mahindra Rs 20 crore (Rs 17 crore), Siemens Rs 40 crore (Rs 6 crore) and ACC paid an advance tax of Rs 10 crore against Rs 6 crore.

Grasim [Get Quote] has paid nearly the same amount last year -  Rs 47 crore (Rs 470 billion)  - while Reliance Energy [Get Quote] paid an advance tax of Rs 7.25 crore (Rs 72.5 million) as against Rs 6 crore (Rs 60 million).

Indus Ind Bank is said to have paid advance tax of Rs 15 crore (Rs 150 million) for the first quarter of the current financial year against Rs 14 crore (Rs 140 million) last year.

Analysts feel this only shows that corporate India will carry on with the growth momentum achieved in the last financial year.

"Even though some commodities have cut prices, the robust commodity cycle per se is not yet over. The interest rates continue to be benign. If the monsoon is on track, corporate India would have nothing to worry," said an analyst with a foreign brokerage.

Non-food credit growth in the first two months of the fiscal year is an indication of the health of corporate India. The non-food credit of the banking system went up by Rs 47,350 crore (Rs 473.5 billion) up to May 27 against Rs 15,661 crore (Rs 156.61 billion) in the comparable period last fiscal.

In FY 2004-05, if one were to exclude the refineries, the rest of the manufacturing sector has posted a 55 per cent growth in net profit in fiscal 2004-05.

The refineries sector accounts for nearly one-third of the sales and one-fourth of the net profits of the corporate sector as a whole.

The financial aggregates for 1,250 companies in the manufacturing sector, studied here by the Business Standard Research Bureau, show a 21.94 per cent rise in sales and a 34.29 per cent rise in net profit.