NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India’s fiscal deficit for April-November was 8.47 trillion rupees ($98.90 billion), or 52.5% of the estimate for the financial year, government data showed on Tuesday.
Net tax receipts for the first eight months of the current financial year were at 14.43 trillion rupees, or 56% of the annual target, compared with 14.36 trillion rupees for the same period last year, the data showed.
India’s financial year runs from April through March.
Total government expenditure for the eight months was 27.41 trillion rupees, or about 57% of the annual goal. The government spent 26.52 trillion rupees in the same period last year.
Till November, the government’s capital expenditure, or spending on building physical infrastructure, was 5.13 trillion rupees, or 46.2% of the annual target, as against 5.86 trillion rupees for the same period a year earlier.
The spending in the current year has been slow due to the national elections and capital expenditure is likely to fall short of the annual target.
Some economists are factoring in a narrower fiscal deficit than the target of 4.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) for the Asian country on account of lower spending.
($1 = 85.6450 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Aftab Ahmed; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)
