The Centre’s total public debt, excluding liabilities, increased by 4.9 per cent to Rs.37,52,576 crore at the end of the first quarter (April-June) this fiscal from Rs.35,78,244 crore in the fourth quarter (January-March) of 2011-12.
However, even as the internal debt component in the total public debt inched up a tad during the April-June period of 2012-13, the shorter term maturities of such debt were on a decline as compared to the previous quarter. Besides, the total outstanding of the Centre’s internal debt constituted a smaller percentage of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) when compared with that in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year.
According to the quarterly report on ‘Public debt management’ prepared by the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) in the Ministry of Finance which was released here on Friday, outstanding internal debt at Rs.33,98,154 crore during the first quarter constituted 90.6 per cent of the total public debt, marginally lower than in the January-March quarter when it stood at 90.1 per cent.
Alongside, the internal debt component added up to 33.4 per cent of GDP as compared to 36.4 per cent in the previous quarter. However, marketable securities — consisting of rupee-denominated dated securities and treasury bills — accounted for 80.9 per cent of the total public debt compared with 79.9 per cent.
The report also revealed that the average maturity of outstanding stock of dated securities in the first quarter increased to 9.80 years from 9.60 years at the end of January-March quarter of 2011-12. Accordingly, at end-June 2012, the proportion of debt maturing in less than one year declined to 1.6 per cent from 3.5 per cent a quarter ago, while debt maturing within 1-5 years increased to 27.2 per cent from 26.7 per cent at end-March 2012. “The change in composition of debt in terms of various maturity buckets reflects the maturity structure of securities issued during Q1 of 2012-13 as well as the maturity dynamics of outstanding securities,” the DEA report said.
Overall, 28.8 per cent of the outstanding debt stock has a residual maturity of up to five years. This implies that over the next five years, on an average, less than 6 per cent of outstanding stock will have to be rolled over each year which also shows that the rollover risk in the debt portfolio has remained low.
As for the holding pattern of government securities, which is available with a lag of a quarter — the latest data available is for end-March 2012 — the report revealed that banks continue to dominate as the major investor category. Their share in holding of government securities declined to 49.1 per cent at end-March 2012 from 50.5 per cent as at end-December 2011.
Among long-term investors, while the share of holding by insurance companies declined to 21.1 per cent from 22.4 per cent a quarter ago, the share of provident funds increased to 7.5 per cent from 7.3 per cent.
Holding of securities by the Reserve Bank of India at end-March 2012 at 14.4 per cent was higher than 13.6 per cent a quarter ago, “mainly reflecting the impact of OMO [open market operation] purchase of securities to support liquidity.”
