India s April-January fiscal deficit hits 66.8% of full-year target
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India s April-January fiscal deficit hits 66.8% of full-year target
Reuters / Feb 26, 2021, 17:00 IST
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NEW DELHI: India s fiscal deficit in the 10 months to end-January stood at Rs 12.34 lakh crore ($167 billion), or 66.8% of the revised budgeted target for the whole fiscal year, government data showed on Friday.
Net tax receipts were Rs 11.02 lakh crore, while total expenditure was Rs 25.17 lakh crore, the data showed.
On February 1, the government revised its fiscal deficit target for the current year that runs through March to 9.5% of gross domestic product (GDP), instead of its original target of 3.5% of GDP as the coronavirus pandemic lead to lower tax collection and higher spending.
Updated Feb 07, 2021 | 11:26 IST
India s fiscal deficit is estimated to be 9.5 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal and is expected to come down to 6.8 per cent in 2021-22 beginning April 1. Economic Affairs Secretary Tarun Bajaj | Photo Credit: PTI
India s sovereign rating should not come under pressure due to surge in fiscal deficit which was mainly on account of higher expenditure to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, said Economic Affairs Secretary Tarun Bajaj.
Given the credibility of the numbers projected in the Budget, he hoped that the global rating agencies would retain India s sovereign rating at the existing levels.
A country’s fiscal balance is measured by its government’s revenue vis-a-vis its expenditure in a given financial year. Fiscal deficit, the condition when the expenditure of the government exceeds its revenue in a year, is the difference between the two. Fiscal deficit is calculated both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The fiscal deficit of a country is calculated as a percentage of its GDP or simply as the total money spent by the government in excess of its income. In either case, the income figure includes only taxes and other revenues and excludes money borrowed to make up the shortfall.