India’s fiscal deficit stood at Rs 16.54 lakh crore in FY24 as against the budgetary target of Rs 17.86 lakh crore. With this, the fiscal gap has reached 95.3 per cent of the budgetary target, data from the Comptroller General of Accounts showed on Friday.
The central government’s fiscal deficit stood at 5.6 per cent of GDP in FY24, below the revised estimate of 5.8 per cent.
The centre’s net tax receipts for FY24 were higher than projected at Rs 23.27 lakh crore, and 100.1 per cent of the year’s target.
Meanwhile, the total expenditure came in at Rs 44.43 lakh crore, or 99 per cent of the targeted expenditure for that year.
The government’s capital spending on infrastructure projects was Rs 9.49 lakh crore.
In addition, fiscal deficit for April this year stood at Rs 2.1 lakh crore, or 12.5 per cent of the full year target.
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India’s fiscal deficit
While announcing the interim budget for this fiscal year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had trimmed the fiscal gap down to 5.8% from 5.9% of gross domestic product forecast earlier. Sitharaman also pegged the fiscal deficit target at 5.1% for the next fiscal year, while India keeps aiming to reach a fiscal deficit level below 4.5 per cent of the GDP by 2025-26.The lower fiscal deficit target for 2024-25 was expected on hopes of strong tax collections and expenditure rationalisation, while a relatively lower spending on subsidies created space for the lower fiscal deficit target.
In the last fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2024, New Delhi’s fiscal prudence efforts also received a shot in the arm from the Reserve Bank of India’s transfer of Rs 87,416 crore as surplus to the central government.
In this fiscal year, New Delhi has got a mega Rs 2.11 lakh crore boost from the RBI as dividend. As per interim budget documents for the ongoing financial year, the Narendra Modi government had budgeted a dividend of Rs 1.02 lakh crore from the RBI, PSBs and other financial institutions.
India’s net direct tax mop up grew by 17.7% year-on-year, reaching Rs 19.58 lakh crore in the fiscal year ending March 2024, exceeding the revised estimates by Rs 13,000 crore and budget estimates by Rs 1.35 lakh crore. The government initially budgeted Rs 18.23 lakh crore as net direct tax revenue for 2023-24, which was subsequently revised to Rs 19.45 lakh crore. GST collection for FY24 saw an increase of 11.7 per cent to Rs 20.14 lakh crore.
