NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India’s fiscal deficit for April-September was 4.75 trillion rupees ($56.50 billion), or over 29% of the estimate for the financial year, government data showed on Wednesday.
Net tax receipts for the first six months of the current financial year were 12.65 trillion rupees, or 49% of the annual target, compared with 11.6 trillion rupees for the same period last year, the data showed.
India’s financial year runs from April through March.
Total government expenditure during the period was 21.1 trillion rupees, or about 44% of the annual goal, close to the spending of 21.2 trillion rupees in the same period last year.
The government’s spending has been lower due to general elections conducted earlier this year.
For the first six months, the government’s capital expenditure, or spending on building physical infrastructure, was 4.15 trillion rupees, or 37% of the annual target, as against 4.9 trillion rupees for the same period a year earlier.
To meet the current financial year’s capital expenditure target of 11.1 trillion rupees, the government needs to spend 1.16 trillion rupees per month from October to March, said Aditi Nayar, an economist at ratings agency ICRA.
“This appears rather challenging at this juncture, and we expect the capex target of 11.1 trillion rupees for financial year 2024-25 to be missed by a margin of at least 500 billion rupees,” Nayar said.
The Indian government has pegged its fiscal deficit target at 4.9% of the gross domestic product in its latest budget, compared with 5.6% in the last fiscal year.
($1 = 84.0660 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Nikunj Ohri and Sarita Chaganti Singh; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Mrigank Dhaniwala)
