India’s April-September Deficit Crosses 95% of Target

New Delhi: India’s budgetary fiscal deficit for the April-September period at Rs 5.95 lakh crore accounted for 95.3 per cent of the full year’s target of Rs 6.24 lakh crore, mainly owing to slow revenue growth during the first half of the year, official data showed on Thursday. The data furnished by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) showed that the fiscal deficit during the corresponding six months of the previous fiscal was 91.3 per cent.

Till September, the government’s total expenditure stood at Rs 13 lakh crore (53.4 per cent of the budget estimates) while the total receipts were Rs 7.09 lakh crore (39 per cent of the budget estimates). This is as compared to 40.6 per cent of budget estimates received in the same period of 2017-18. “Rs 3,22,189 crore has been transferred to state governments as devolution of the share of taxes by the government up to this period, which is Rs 33,093 crore higher than the corresponding period of last year,” the Finance Ministry Arun Jaitley said in a statement. (IANS)