India’s April-February fiscal deficit crosses 97 % of FY’13 projections

The fiscal deficit during the 11 months from April 2012 to February 2013 reached 97.4 per cent of the budget estimates of the total fiscal deficit for the current fiscal ending 31 March 2013.

Fiscal deficit during the corresponding period of the previous year was 94.6 per cent of the budget estimates.

India's fiscal deficit stood at Rs5,07,000 crore during April-February 2012-13 against government's estimates of Rs5,13,590 crore for the entire fiscal, ie, April-March 2012-13, data released by the Controller General of Accounts showed.

The government, however, has revised the 2012-13 estimates of fiscal deficit upward to 5.2 per cent of GDP from the 2012-13 budget estimates of Rs5,13,590 crore or 5.1 per cent of GDP.

The fiscal deficit, which is the difference between expenditure and revenue receipts, stood at over Rs5,07,000 crore at the end of February 2013.

Against this, the government's tax revenue during the period stood at over Rs5,71,000 crore (77.1 per cent of the budget estimates), up from 76.9 per cent in the same period of the previous fiscal.

The government aims to roll back fiscal deficit to 4.8 per cent in the coming financial year (2013-14) and further to 3.0 per cent of GDP by 2016-17.

While the government hopes to bridge fiscal deficit through market borrowings or sale of shares or assets of public sector companies, the bigger worry is the country's current account deficit (CAD), which is expected to further rise to a record level from last year's 5.4 per cent.

The government is taking steps to limit fiscal deficit like reducing the subsidy element in the prices of petroleum fuels, there is no such short-cuts for reducing current account deficit.