In 7 months, India's fiscal deficit hits 45 per cent of FY24 target
India's fiscal deficit for the first seven months of the current financial year touched 45% of the full-year budget estimate, marginally lower than the 45.6% deficit recorded in the year-ago period, data released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) showed on Thursday.
In absolute terms, the fiscal deficit between April and October this year stood at ₹8.03 lakh crore against ₹7.6 lakh crore a year ago. The government has pegged FY24 fiscal deficit at 5.9% of the GDP or ₹17.8 lakh crore.
A 15% year-on-year decline in capital expenditure (capex) in October helped contain the fiscal deficit at the end of seven months.
Capex expanded 33.7% in the April-October period, data showed.
Capital expenditure stood at ₹5.47 lakh crore, higher than ₹4.09 lakh crore in the year-ago period, it showed. Total expenditure stood at ₹23.94 lakh crore, which is 53% of the total expenditure budget.
Out of this, ₹18.47 lakh crore expenditure was on revenue account, ₹5.45 lakh crore was for interest payments and ₹2.31 lakh crore was spent on account of major subsidies.
Net receipts stood at ₹15.90 lakh crore, which is 58.6% of total budget estimate, the data showed. Net tax revenues rose 11.2% and non-tax revenues expanded 48.7% following dividend transfer from the Reserve Bank.
Tax revenues reached ₹13.02 lakh crore or 55.9% of the budget estimate. Non-tax revenue stood at ₹2.65 lakh crore in the period under review.
