Total government liabilities rise to Rs 84.6 lakh crore in Q1: Finmin report

Total liabilities of the government increased to Rs 88.18 lakh crore at end-June 2019 from Rs 84.68 lakh crore at end-March 2019, according to the latest data on public debt.

Public debt accounted for 89.4 per cent of total outstanding liabilities at end-June 2019, the quarterly report on public debt management released on Friday said.

"Nearly 28.9 per cent of the outstanding dated securities had a residual maturity of less than 5 years. The holding pattern indicates a share of 40.3 per cent for commercial banks and 24.3 per cent for insurance companies at end-March 2019," it said.

During the first quarter of the current fiscal, the central government issued dated securities worth Rs 2,21,000 crore as against Rs 1,44,000 crore in the same period a year ago.

The weighted average maturity (WAM) of new issuances stood at 15.86 years in the quarter as against 14.18 years in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal, according to data collated by Public Debt Management Cell (PDMC).

G-Sec yields have shown a moderating trend in the first quarter of the fiscal with the rate declining to 7.21 per cent compared to the weighted average yield of 7.47 per cent in the previous quarter.

This reflected the impact of several developments namely reduction in policy repo rate twice under the LAF by 25 basis points each, OMO purchase auction and a downward movement in the yield on US 10-year treasury bond.

During April-June 2019, the central government did not raise any amount through the issuance of Cash Management Bills and the net average liquidity injection by RBI under Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF) including Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) was Rs 17,599.3 crore during the quarter.

The yield on 10-year benchmark G-Sec (7.26 per cent GS 2029) closed at 6.88 per cent on June 29, 2019, it said.

The central government dated securities continued to account for a major share of total trading volumes in the secondary market, with a share of 86.0 per cent in total outright trading volumes in value terms during the first quarter of the current fiscal, it added.

With regard to net foreign direct investment, it increased substantially at 51 per cent to USD 14.4 billion as compared to USD 9.5 billion in the first quarter of the previous fiscal.

India's foreign exchange reserves stood at USD 427.7 billion as on June 28, 2019, up from USD 406.1 billion over that on June 29, 2018.