New Delhi: The government on Wednesday said it has curtailed its additional market borrowing programme by Rs 30,000 crore after review of revenue receipts and expenditure, a move likely to help in containing fiscal deficit.
The government on December 27 last year had announced that it would make an additional borrowing of Rs 50,000 crore during 2017-18 through dated securities. However, there would have been no change in the net borrowing as envisaged in the budget.
Earlier in the day, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg in a tweet said that the government has reassessed additional borrowing requirements taking note of revenue receipts and expenditure pattern.
Requirement of additional borrowing being reduced from Rs 50,000 crore as notified earlier to Rs 20,000 crore.
Later a finance ministry statement said that after a review of trends of revenue receipts and expenditure pattern, it has been assessed that additional borrowing of only Rs 20,000 crore of government securities would be adequate to meet financing needs.
"Government did not accept borrowings of Rs 15,000 crore in last three auctions. Remaining Rs 15,000 crore would be reduced from the notified borrowing programme of ensuing weeks," it added.
The government had pegged the fiscal deficit target of Rs 3.2 per cent of the GDP for the current fiscal. Additional borrowing by the government may have some impact on the fiscal math.
Since the revenue collection from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is slightly lower than the expected in October and November, the additional borrowing would help bridge the shortfall.
A decline in revenue collections from Goods and Services Tax, and lower non-tax revenue have led to worry about government meeting the fiscal deficit target.
As per reports, the government is seeking additional dividend from the Reserve Bank to make up for the shortfall in the receipts.
The RBI had halved its dividend payout to the government to Rs 30,659 crore for the year-ended June as it had to print new currency in the aftermath of demonetisation.
As per the latest figure, in November 2017 the fiscal deficit target had breached budget target and touched 112 per cent of the budget estimate for 2017-18 mainly due to lower GST collections and higher expenditure.