The Centre is “well on track” to meet its fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal on the back of a robust rebound in tax revenues, the Economic Survey for 2021-22 showed on Monday.

The agile fiscal policy approach adopted by the Central Government, coupled with the buoyant revenue collection received so far this year, has created headroom for taking up additional fiscal policy interventions based on the need of the evolving situation, the Survey highlighted.

“It is expected that reaching the budget estimate for fiscal deficit during 2021-22 will not be a concern for the Central Government,” it added.

In budget 2021-22, the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic disbanded the government’s fiscal consolidation roadmap to reach a fiscal deficit of 3 per cent of GDP but announced its medium-term objective to reduce the fiscal deficit to 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2025-26. She had pegged the fiscal deficit target at 6.8 per cent of GDP for 2021-22 as against 9.2 per cent in the previous fiscal.

 In the first eight months of the current fiscal, the Centre’s fiscal deficit stood at 46.2 per cent of the full-year target. Meanwhile, the Economic Survey noted that India’s public debt portfolio is “stable and also sustainable”.

“Public debt portfolio exhibits low currency and interest rate risk owing to low reliance on external borrowing and issuance of majority of securities at fixed coupon. Further, most of the external borrowing are from official sources which are of long term and concessional in nature,” the Survey said.

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