The Union Budget of 2021-22 pegged India’s revised fiscal deficit target for the current financial year 2020-21 at 9.5% of GDP. It is much higher than the earlier estimate of 3.5 %. In absolute terms, the fiscal deficit is more than Rs.18 lakh crore. [The government has fixed the target to spend Rs 11.7 lakh crore in just 3 months in the current financial year, which ends on March 31, 2021. It will borrow Rs 80,000 crore in the next two months]
[You may also read: Fiscal Deficit; Revenue Deficit; Primary Deficit; Fiscal Slippage Demystified]
The fiscal deficit target for 2021-22 is 6.8 %. The two main sources for financing the deficit will be gross market borrowing and National Small Savings Fund.
Further, the Government plans to bring down the fiscal deficit level to 4.5 % by 2025-26. It had to make amendments to the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act to make necessary changes in the fiscal consolidation roadmap.
[You may also read: What is FRBM Act? and What is the roadmap to fiscal consolidation?]
The Government has increased expenditure across the board to revive the coronavirus pandemic affected economy. Actually, the 21 lakh crore economic package that the Modi Government had announced last year was criticized for not having a significant fiscal outlay.
The Government has hiked the capital expenditure in 2021-22 by 34.36 % to Rs.5.54 crore from the revised estimate of 4.12 lakh crore in 2020-21. If the budgeted numbers are realised, capital expenditure would have grown from 1.6 % of GDP to 2.5 % of GDP in 2 years.
The quality of expenditure has also improved with the percentage of capital expenditure in the total spend increasing. Revenue expenditure will be at 84.1% of total spend in FY22 compared with 87% last year. In comparison, capital expenditure will be at 15.9% of overall spending next fiscal year compared to 13% last year. The budget has increased spending in the infrastructure and health sector. Higher Government spending will lead to higher private investment and improve demand in the economy leading to higher GDP growth.
A part of the increment in Fiscal Deficit in 2020-21 to 9.5 % is because the Government included certain items that have always been off-budget in the headline figures for fiscal deficit. [Borrrowings incurred through Public Sector Undertakings/ PSUs like the Food Corporation of India’s borrowing from the National Small Savings Funds have always been excluded from the budget]. An Indian express estimate shows that by excluding such off-balance-sheet funding, the headline-fiscal deficit declines to 8.6 percent of GDP.
This will lead to more transparency in the budget exercise as liabilities of Government-owned undertakings will also reflect in the budget figures.
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