Will meet fiscal deficit target: Sinha

A day ahead of the release of the fiscal deficit numbers for the first nine months of the financial year, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said the Centre would rein in excess expenditure over receipts at the targeted 4.1 per cent of the gross domestic product.

"We are working through all the numbers right now... the honourable finance minister has said that we are following a prudent fiscal policy, and we will meet our fiscal deficit target this year. I don't anticipate any challenge," he said. The fiscal deficit had touched almost 99 per cent of the Budget projections in the first eight months of the financial year.

Pension liabilities, he said, will be the main concern of the government in the next 20-30 years.

He urged the private sector to participate in the National Pension System, introduced in 2004 by the then National Democratic Alliance government.

"We have to get more people to participate in NPS," he said, adding that there was also a need to get the private sector and the people in the informal sector to participate.

The minister also asked the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority to introduce more products.