Fiscal deficit crosses 77% of budgeted target in first 4 months of FY20

The government's fiscal deficit touched Rs 5.47 trillion in the June quarter, which is 77.8 per cent of the budget estimate for 2019-20.

In absolute terms, the fiscal deficit or gap between expenditure and revenue was Rs 5,47,605 crore at July-end, as per the data released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) on Friday.

The fiscal deficit stood at 86.5 per cent of 2018-19 budget estimate in the year-ago period.

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

It aims to restrict the deficit at 3.4 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal, same as the last fiscal.

The CGA data showed that revenue receipts of the government during April-July, 2019-20 remained unchanged at 19.5 per cent of the Budget Estimate (BE) compared to the corresponding period last year.

In absolute terms, revenue receipts stood at Rs 3.82 trillion at July-end 2019. During the entire year, the revenue receipts has been pegged at Rs 19.62 trillion.

The capital expenditure was 31.8 per cent of the BE. This compares with 37.1 per cent in the year-ago period, the CGA said.

Total expenditure during April-July period stood at Rs 9.47 trillion or 34 per cent of the BE. It was 36.4 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 27.86 trillion.

The CGA further said the fiscal deficit figure in monthly accounts during a financial year is not necessarily an indicator of fiscal deficit for the year.

Its data 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, which may get substantially offset by the end of the financial year.