Explore Business Standard
Fiscal Deficit Target
Industry body CII has suggested the government to stick to the fiscal deficit target of 4.9 per cent of GDP for 2024-25 and 4.5 per cent for 2025-26, cautioning that "overly aggressive targets" beyond these could adversely affect India's economic growth. "India has been growing rapidly amidst a slowing global economy. Prudent fiscal management for macroeconomic stability has been pivotal to this growth," said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII, elaborating on suggestions for the forthcoming Union Budget. CII also highlighted the announcement in the Union Budget 2024-25 to keep the fiscal deficit at levels that help reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio. In preparation for this, the forthcoming budget could lay out a glide path to bring the central government's debt to below 50 per cent of GDP in the medium term (by 2030-31), and below 40 per cent of GDP in the long term, CII has suggested. Such an explicit target will have a positive impact on India's sovereign credit rating and ...
Fitch Ratings on Friday said the slightly faster pace of fiscal deficit reduction does not significantly change India's sovereign credit profile but the government's emphasis on deficit reduction will help to stabilise the debt-to-GDP ratio over the medium term. In a post budget commentary, Fitch Ratings Director, Sovereign Ratings, Jeremy Zook said over the next five years, India's government debt-to-GDP ratio would be broadly stable at just above 80 per cent of GDP. This is based on a continued path of gradual deficit reduction, as well as robust nominal growth of around 10.5 per cent of GDP. In the interim Budget 2024-25, presented in Parliament on Thursday, the government revised lower its current year fiscal deficit to 5.8 per cent from 5.9 per cent budgeted earlier. The deficit, which is the gap between the government's revenue and expenditure, will come down to 5.1 per cent in 2024-25 and further to 4.5 per cent by 2025-26. Fitch said this demonstrates a firm desire to adher
The government will stick to the fiscal deficit target of 5.9 per cent of the GDP as robust tax, non-tax collections will help meet the spending requirement and make up for any shortfall in disinvestment proceeds, Finance Secretary T V Somanathan said on Friday. Although there would be a shortfall with respect to disinvestment, he said, this shortfall would be met by non-tax revenue mobilisation. "Disinvestment target is unlikely to be met. However, I would say in aggregate the collective amount between disinvestment and non-tax revenue is likely to be very close to the budget," he told PTI in an interview. The total of disinvestment receipts, plus non-tax receipts are likely to be very close to the Budget Estimates, he said. "We expect to adhere to our fiscal deficit target this year...none of the events so far have caused anything for us to deviate from it," he said. The government has already got a higher dividend from the Reserve Bank of India and expects higher dividends from
The central government is on track to meet its fiscal deficit target of 6.4 per cent of the GDP for 2022-23 on the back of strong growth in revenue collections, the World Bank said in its India Development Update on Tuesday. High nominal GDP growth in the first quarter supported strong growth in revenue collection, especially Goods and Services Tax (GST), despite tax cuts on fuel. Notwithstanding an increase in spending due to expanded fertilizer subsidies and food subsidies for vulnerable households in response to the commodity price shock, the government is on track to meet its FY22/23 fiscal deficit target of 6.4 per cent of GDP and the general government deficit is projected to decline to 9.6 per cent from 10.3 per cent in FY21/22 and 13.3 per cent in FY20/21. Public debt is also projected to decline to 84.3 per cent of GDP in FY'23, from a peak of 87.6 per cent in FY'21, it said. The central government's revenues increased by 9.5 per cent and spending by 12.2 per cent. As a .