Government meets 2017-18 fiscal deficit target

The Central government broadly met its revised fiscal deficit target of 3.5 per cent for financial year 2017-18, official data showed here on Thursday.

According to the figures released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA), fiscal deficit -- the difference between revenue and expenditure -- for the last financial year stood at 3.53 per cent of the country's GDP.

As per the provisional CGA data, the deficit reached Rs 5.91 lakh crore as against the revised estimates of Rs 5.94 lakh crore.

In budget 2018-19, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley revised the fiscal deficit target to 3.5 per cent from 3.2 per cent.

Besides, the data showed that the exchequer's total receipts during the fiscal under review yielded Rs 15.51 lakh crore, or 95.6 per cent of the estimates.

In addition, the total expenditure during the April-March 2017-18 period was Rs 21.42 lakh crore, or 96.6 per cent of the entire fiscal's estimate.

"The seasonal trend of revenue receipts out pacing revenue expenditure in March 2018 and a reversal in certain loans that had been extended previously, led to the total fiscal deficit for FY2018 printing marginally lower than the revised estimate," Aditi Nayar, Principal Economist, ICRA was quoted as saying in a statement.

"However, the revenue deficit for FY2018 has modestly exceeded the revised level."

On a monthly basis, the fiscal deficit in April 2018 touched Rs 1.51 lakh crore or 24.3 per cent of Budget estimates for 2018-19.

The CGA figures showed that the 2018-19 deficit has been pegged at Rs 6.24 lakh crore.

The total receipts during the month under review was Rs 71,450 crore, or 3.9 per cent of the estimates, whereas the total expenditure was Rs 2.23 lakh crore, or 9.1 per cent of the entire fiscal's estimate.

--IANS

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