Letters: The real fiscal problem

This refers to Rajiv Shastri's article "India's self-created fiscal cliff" (December 9). Even as an educated layman with no doctorate in economics, I was concerned about the increasing government profligacy. I thought that both government assurances and the prevailing analytical trends were not truly reflective of the real hazard they posted. I had used the same construct of expressing the government deficit as a percentage of revenues, not the gross domestic product, in an article published in Loksatta in December 2012, and concluded that the deficit at 52 per cent of the estimated revenues in 2012/13 and raised major doubts about the government's ability to repay its borrowings. The debt service burden alone amounted to more than a third of the revenue. This has serious implications for not just galloping inflation but also the safety of the common man's savings placed in government securities believing them to be as good as gold.

Sudhir Apte Satara

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