Fiscal deficit during the current financial year could overshoot the target by 1 per cent to around 5.6 per cent of the GDP, said Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory panel member Mr M Govinda Rao.
“Around that it could be,” Mr Rao said when asked if he expects fiscal deficit to be around 5.6 per cent.
“They (government) have a huge problem. If fiscal deficit slippage is one per cent, next year if you want to bring it down to 4.1 per cent. There is going to be a huge problem,” he said.
Last month, Chief Economic Advisor Mr Kaushik Basu had said that he expects fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP to overshoot the target.
Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Chairman had said that the fiscal deficit is likely to one per cent higher than the target of 4.6 per cent.
The government’s fiscal situation has shown deterioration at the end of the first nine months of the current financial year, mainly due to poor realisation of non-tax revenues and also the government has so far managed to raise Rs 1,145 crore this fiscal from disinvestment against a target of Rs 40,000 crore.
According to the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) data, the government’s fiscal deficit went up to Rs 3.81 lakh crore, or 92.3 per cent of the Budget estimates at the end of December.
For the current fiscal (2011-12), the government has estimated a deficit of Rs 4.12 lakh crore, or 4.6 per cent of the GDP.
The Centre’s fiscal deficit - gap between overall expenditure and receipts - was 45 per cent of the estimates in the same period last year.
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