The government's fiscal deficit in end-October touched 45.6% of the full-year Budget Estimate, according to the data released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) on Wednesday.
In actual terms, the fiscal deficit -- the difference between expenditure and revenue -- was ₹7,58,137 crore during the April-October period of 2022-23.
In the corresponding period last year, the deficit was 36.3% of the Budget Estimates of 2021-22.
For 2022-23, the fiscal deficit of the government is estimated to be ₹16.61 lakh crore or 6.4% of the GDP.
As per the CGA data, the net tax revenue at ₹11.71 lakh crore was 60.5% of BE 2022-23. During the corresponding period of 2021-22, the tax revenue (net) was 68.1% of that year's BE.
Central government's total expenditure during April-October works out to be 54.3% of BE 2022-23, higher than 52.4% of BE in the year-earlier period.
Commenting on the data, Aditi Nayar, Chief Economist, ICRA, said in April-October 2022-23, while the Government of India's net tax revenues reported a healthy growth of 11%, the 14% contraction in non-tax revenues, combined with the 10% rise in revenue expenditure, and the robust 62% expansion in capex, widened the fiscal deficit to ₹7.6 lakh crore from ₹5.5 lakh crore in the first seven months of 2021-22.
"Taking into account the estimated additional expenditure that is likely in FY2023, we estimate the extent of the overshoot in the fiscal deficit at a modest (about) ₹1 lakh crore, given the considerable upside seen in non-excise tax revenues as well as savings expected under other expenditure heads," she said.
Going by the buoyancy in the revenue collections in the first seven months, Shailendra Kumar, Chairman of the TIOL Knowledge Foundation, said that the Union Government had done ‘much better than expected’ in bridging the fiscal deficit for the current fiscal.
"At the present pace, my expectation is that the Union Finance Minister would be tapping her feet by lowering the projected deficit of 6.4% by a good measure," he said.
As per the CGA data, the central government's total receipts, including non-tax revenue, stood at ₹13.85 lakh crore or 60.7% of the current year's BE. In the year-ago period, the total receipts had touched 64.7% of BE 2021-22.
Vivek Jalan, Partner, Tax Connect Advisory, said on both GST and Income Tax, the revenues are expected to be much more robust and an uptick of ₹4 lakh crore is expected on the tax front.
"This means that the Government would get an opportunity to spend ₹2 lakh crore more during the coming four months of this fiscal for the benefit of the citizens and to spur up the growth when the global outlook looks gloomy," he said.
The CGA said the fiscal deficit figure shown in monthly accounts is not necessarily an indicator of fiscal deficit for the year as it gets impacted by the temporal mismatch between the flow of non-debt receipts and expenditure up to that month. A fiscal deficit is an indicator of the government's market borrowing.
