Fiscal Deficit for April-October at 102.4%, Exceeds Full-year Target

New Delhi: The country's fiscal deficit hit 102.4% of the 2019-20 Budget Estimate at Rs 7.2 lakh crore at the end of October, government data showed on Friday.

The fiscal deficit, or the gap between expenditure and revenue, was at Rs 7,20,445 crore as on October 31, 2019, according to the data released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA). The deficit was at 103.9% of 2018-19 Budget Estimate (BE) in the corresponding month a year ago.

The government has estimated the fiscal deficit for the current financial year at Rs 7.03 lakh crore, aiming to restrict the deficit at 3.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

In September, the government decided to lower tax rate for corporates and has pegged that it will have an impact of Rs 1.45 lakh crore on its revenue mobilisation.

Tax sops were intended to boost investment cycle in the face of slowing GDP growth, which had dipped to a six-year low of 5% in the first quarter ended June of this fiscal.

The GDP slipped further to over six-year low of 4.5% in the second quarter ended September, as per the government data released on Friday.

Further, the CGA data showed that government's revenue receipts during the April-October period of 2019-20 period rose to 46.2% of the BE as compared to 45.7% in the corresponding period last year.

In absolute terms, revenue receipts stood at Rs 9.07 lakh crore at the end of October. For the entire 2019-20, the revenue receipts have been pegged at Rs 19.62 lakh crore.

Capital expenditure stood at 59.5% of the BE during April-October period as compared to 59% in the year-ago period, the CGA data showed.

Total expenditure during April-October stood at Rs 16.54 lakh crore, or 59.4 per cent of the BE.

The government has pegged its total expenditure for 2019-20 at Rs 27.86 lakh crore.

The fiscal deficit figure in monthly accounts during a financial year is not necessarily an indicator of fiscal deficit for the year, as per the CGA.

Its data gets impacted by temporal mismatch between flow of non-debt receipts and expenditure up to that month on account of various transitional factors both on receipt and expenditure side, which may get substantially offset by the end of the financial year.