Parliament nod for additional spending in FY24, CGST Bill
₹58,378 crore in FY24. A significant portion of it will go towards fertilizer subsidies and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA). On 6 December, minister of state for finance, Pankaj Chaudhary, presented the first set of additional spending requests seeking the Parliament’s approval on behalf of the Centre.
Parliament has allowed total additional expenditure of ₹1.29 trillion for FY24. Furthermore, approval was granted for an expenditure of ₹70,968 crore, which will be covered by increased receipts and savings under different heads. Last week, Lok Sabha passed the supplementary demands for grants, and forwarded it to Rajya Sabha.
The Upper House of Indian parliament returned the appropriation bills to the Lok Sabha after a brief discussion on Tuesday. The Narendra Modi-led government said it will be spending an additional ₹13,351 crore on fertilizer subsidies and ₹14,524 crore on MGNREGA. For the FY24 budget, the Centre allocated ₹1.75 trillion for fertilizer subsidy after a record ₹2.55 trillion were spent on it during FY23.
In September, the Centre said it would borrow ₹6.55 trillion for the second half of FY24 or 42.45% of its gross market borrowing of ₹15.43 trillion for the ongoing financial year, leaving its borrowing plans unchanged for the fiscal. So far, the Centre maintained that it will meet FY24’s fiscal deficit target,of 5.9% of gross domestic product, comfortably due to robust tax collections, higher non-tax revenues, including dividends from the Reserve Bank of India and state-run banks, which will offset any revenue shortfall from disinvestments. The government’s fiscal deficit during the first seven months of the financial year stood at ₹8.03 trillion, or 45% of annual
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