Government’s Fiscal Deficit in the April-February Period of 2011-12 stood at Rs 4.93 lakh crore

As per the Controller General of Accounts’ (CGA) data released on 30 March 2012, union government’s fiscal deficit during the April-February period of 2011-12 stood at Rs 4.93 lakh crore, or 95% of the revised estimates. At the end of the 11 months ending February, the fiscal deficit was Rs 493571 crore or 94.6% of the target.

During the April-February period of 2010-11, the deficit had stood at 68.6% of the budgeted target.

The government in March revised upwards the fiscal deficit target for the 2011-12 fiscal to 5.9% of GDP, from 4.6% projected earlier.

Rise in fiscal deficit was attributed to high subsidy bill, increasing crude oil prices, low tax collection and poor realisation from sale of government equity in state-owned companies.

in the nine months to December 2011, the cover that the foreign exchange reserves provided to the total external debt came down to less than 89%. In this period external debt to GDP ratio increased to 20% vis-à-vis 17.8% at March-end 2011. India’s total external debt at the end of December 2011 was $335 billion, an increase of $29 billion over $306 billion at March-end 2011. Higher commercial borrowings and short-term trade credit were held responsible for the raise.

The share of dollar denominated debt at 57% was the highest in external debt, followed by the rupee 18.6%, Japanese yen 10%, SDR 9% and euro 4%.

The long-term debt was $257 billion, recording an increase of $15.8 billion over the March-end 2011 level, while short-term debt increased by $13 billion to $ 78 billion.  Short-term debt accounted for 23% of India’s total external debt. Long-term debt accounted 77%. In terms of component the share of commercial borrowings stood highest at 30%, followed by NRI deposits 16% and multilateral debt 15%.