With small saving corpus shrinking, states opt for higher market borrowing

Small savings, which once constituted a major part of borrowing by states, is losing sheen, as reflected by the profile of borrowing mix of state governments.  

Stock of National Small Saving Fund (NSSF) has been declining consistently over the past few months, data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and a research report from the credit rating agency, Icra, shows.  

Even states like West Bengal, which have been traditionally major contributor to the overall small savings mobilisation, have lost the edge to high yielding saving instruments like chit funds, turning the corpus into negative. Recently, West Bengal Small Savings Development Officers Association demanded action against mushrooming chit fund companies in the east due to the steady decline in collections.

According to Gautam Deb, leader, CPI(M), the small savings and post office collections in West Bengal during the April-October 2012 period were merely Rs 194 crore, against the targeted amount of Rs 8,370 crore.  

However, data from various sources shows the sharp fall in small savings is a national phenomena now. The Mid-Year Economic Analysis 2012-13 by government of India indicated that the net outflow under NSSF rose to Rs 13,600 crore in H1FY13, against Rs 6,500 crore in H1FY12, according to Icra.

Further, with RBI slashing interest rate, it is expected that the interest rate on small savings might also come down.  

“While a lower policy rate would transmit to lower bank deposit rates, it is possible that the rates on small savings instruments for 2013-14 may be revised downwards during the annual review, dampening the relative attractiveness of the latter,” predicts Icra

Around 2009-10, when policy rates were low, small savings were an attractive option as bank deposits rates were lower. Thus, Icra points out that the data published by the RBI indicated that the stock of NSSF loans of the 28 states rose by Rs 23,100 crore in 2009-10 and nearly Rs 40,000 crore  in 2010-11. By March 2012,  the stock of NSSF loans by Rs 8,200 crore in 2011-12. Thus, there was a net depletion of Rs 8,200 crore in the small savings corpus due to higher outflows than in inflows, explains Jayanta Roy, analyst at Icra.   

Notably, the mandatory allocation of net small savings collections to the states was reduced to 50 per cent from 80 per cent from 2012-13 onwards. States can exercise the option of either 50 per cent or 100 per cent of the net collections in their own territories. About 16 of the 28 states have opted to avail 50 per cent of net small savings collections in 2012-13.

According to an August 2012 press release by the government, the net small savings collection in 2009-10 was about Rs 64,300 crore, which came down to Rs 58,600 crore in 2010-11, and went into negative by Rs 1,900 crore in April-June period of 2012-13 fiscal.

Some of the popular small savings instrument include Public Provident Fund (PPF), National Savings Certificate and Post office savings schemes. To boost the popularity of small savings, the government had fixed the rate of interest on most small  savings schemes in alignment with G-Sec rates of similar maturity, among various measures. While bank deposits offer up to 50-100 basis point higher interest rate than small savings, higher investments in gold and real estate have also led to shrinkage in small savings.

“The rate of savings itself is coming down, so there will be a decline in all forms of savings. Moreover, there has been more interest in investments like gold and real estate because it is seen as a hedge against inflation. Till inflation does not come down, the savings rate will continue to be low,” said  Devendra Pant, director, India Ratings & Research, Fitch Group Company

With the NSSF corpus declining, the states opted to raise funds through market borrowing or state development loans (SDL) through the RBI window. In 2011-12, the net funds raised by the 12 states in the Icra sample SDL increased by a steep 65 per cent in 2011-12 and a further 27 per cent  in April-December 2012 in year-on-year (y-o-y) terms, the report says.