Indian states are likely to borrow a record-high sum of 5 trillion rupees ($55.45 billion) in the January to March quarter, the Reserve Bank of India said in a statement on Friday.
Indian government bond market participants were expecting states to issue a record issuance calendar for the last quarter of the financial year, after they raised a total of 7.13 trillion rupees via bond sales in the first three quarters.
If the states go ahead with the scheduled amount, this would be their highest ever quarterly borrowing, and also push their annual borrowing to an all-time high.
The higher issuance comes as demand for bonds has weakened across segments. The fresh supply is poised to push up yields.
"Irrespective of whether the actual borrowing undershoots, we are going to see a rise in longer duration yields of central as well as state debt," a trader with a state-run bank said.
($1 = 90.1640 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru and Dharamraj Dhutia in Mumbai; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

)