The month's tax collection was 14.54 billion pesos ($4.66 billion), exceeding the median forecast of 14.29 billion pesos by 12 local and international analysts surveyed by Reuters.

"This demonstrates once again the excellent performance of the Argentine economy, the high level of (economic) activity and the strong sales that took place," Economy Minister Felisa Miceli told a news conference.

Latin America's No. 3 economy grew in 2006 by about 9 percent for the fourth straight year, recovering from a deep crisis in 2001-02, and strong revenues have helped the center-left government sustain a hefty primary budget surplus in the last few years.

The country's tax agency AFIP said January's increase in tax revenue was mainly due to a bigger take from sales tax, company contributions for employees and earnings taxes.

"The growth in collection of value-added (sales) tax ... that led to a year-on-year variation of 27.6 percent is due mainly to the increase in economic activity and improvements in tax-gathering," an AFIP statement said.

It added that January's figure marked a new record, beating the previous record of May 2006.
In the last month of 2006, the country's tax collection was 14.12 billion pesos, contributing to record tax receipts for the whole year of 150.01 billion pesos.

The government has been able to sustain a hefty primary budget surplus in the last few years, thanks largely to record-high revenue levels.

The primary surplus measures the amount of excess revenue over expenditures before the government pays interest due on debt. It is closely watched in some emerging markets to gauge a country's ability to service its debt. ($1=3.12 Argentine pesos)