Fiscal deficit touches 128.5% of Budget Estimate in January-end

India’s fiscal deficit touched 128.5 per cent of the whole-year Budget target in January-end, the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) said on Friday.

The deficit during the same period during 2018-19 was 121.5 per cent of that year’s Revised Budget Estimate (RE).

In actual terms, the fiscal deficit or gap between the expenditure and revenue stood at ₹9,85,472 crore. The government had targeted to restrict the fiscal deficit at ₹7,66,846 crore during the year ending March 31, 2020.

While presenting the Union Budget to Parliament earlier this month, Finance Minister Nirmalal Sitharaman had raised fiscal deficit target to 3.8 per cent of the GDP from 3.3 per cent pegged earlier for 2019-20 due to revenue shortage.

As per the CGA data on monthly accounts, revenue receipts during April-January were at ₹12.5 lakh crore or 67.6 per cent of the RE for 2019-20. This compares with 68.3 per cent of the RE in the previous fiscal.

Total receipts were at 66.4 per cent of RE as against 67.5 per cent in the year-ago period.

The CGA further said that total expenditure as of January-end was ₹22.68 lakh crore or 84.1 per cent of RE, higher than 81.5 per cent in the corresponding period of the last fiscal.