Govt’s gross debt rises 2.2% to Rs 159.53 lakh crore in Q1

New Delhi: The government’s total gross debt increased by 2.2 per cent quarter-on-quarter to Rs 159.53 lakh crore in April-June this fiscal, a finance ministry report said on Friday.

The liabilities stood at Rs 156.08 lakh crore at March-end.

“This represented a quarter-on-quarter increase of 2.2 per cent in Q1 2023-24. Public debt accounted for 89.5 per cent of total gross liabilities during the quarter,” according to the Public Debt Management report for the April-June 2023 quarter.

Nearly 26.6 per cent of the outstanding dated securities had a residual maturity of less than 5 years, it said.

Since April-June 2010-11, the Public Debt Management Cell (PDMC), the Budget Division in the finance ministry, has been bringing out a quarterly report on debt management on a regular basis.

During the first quarter of 2023-24, the central government on the issuance/settlement basis of dated securities raised the gross amount of Rs 4.08 lakh crore, and Rs 2.71 lakh crore after adjusting for switches.

The weighted average yield (WAY) of issuances during the quarter stood at 7.13 per cent and it was 7.34 per cent for the January-March quarter of 2022-Y23.

According to the report, the weighted average maturity (WAM) of the issuances worked out to 17.58 years for the first quarter of the current fiscal and 16.58 for the preceding quarter.