Fiscal deficit touches Rs 4.32 lakh crore in Q1

The government's fiscal deficit touched Rs 4.32 lakh crore for the June quarter, which is 61.4 per cent of the budget estimate for 2019-20 fiscal.

In absolute terms, the fiscal deficit or gap between expenditure and revenue was Rs 4.32 lakh crore during at June-end, as per the data released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) on Wednesday.

The fiscal deficit was 68.7 per cent of 2018-19 budget estimate in the year-ago period.

The government estimates the fiscal deficit to be at Rs 7.03 lakh crore during 2019-20.

The government aims to restrict the fiscal deficit at 3.4 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal, same as the last financial year.

The CGA data showed that revenue receipts of the government during April-June, 2019-20 was 14.4 per cent of the Budget Estimate (BE). It was 15.5 per cent of BE in the year-ago period.

In absolute terms, revenue receipts stood at Rs 2.84 lakh crore at June-end 2019. During the entire year, the revenue receipts has been pegged at Rs 19.77 lakh crore.

The capital expenditure was 18.8 per cent of the BE. This compares with 29 per cent in the year-ago period, the CGA said.

Total expenditure during April-June period stood at Rs 7.21 lakh crore or 25.9 per cent of BE. It was 29 per cent of BE in the corresponding period last fiscal.

The government has pegged its total expenditure during the fiscal ending March 2020 at Rs 27.84 lakh crore.

The CAG said the fiscal deficit figure shown in monthly accounts during a financial year is not necessarily an indicator of fiscal deficit for the year as it gets impacted by temporal mismatch between flow of not-debt receipts and expenditure up to that month on account of various transitional factors both on receipt and expenditure side.