Fiscal deficit touches Rs 5.47 lakh cr at July-end; reaches 77.8% of budget estimate for 2019-20

New Delhi: The government’s fiscal deficit touched Rs 5.47 lakh crore at July-end, which is 77.8 percent of the budget estimate for 2019-20. In absolute terms, the fiscal deficit or gap between expenditure and revenue was Rs 5,47,605 crore at July-end, as per the data released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) on Friday. The fiscal deficit stood at 86.5 percent of 2018-19 budget estimate in the year-ago period. The government estimates the fiscal deficit to be at Rs 7.03 lakh crore during 2019-20. [caption id=“attachment_6013191” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters.[/caption] It aims to restrict the deficit at 3.3 percent of the GDP in the current fiscal, same as the last fiscal. The CGA data showed that revenue receipts of the government during April-July, 2019-20 remained unchanged at 19.5 percent of the Budget Estimate (BE) compared to the corresponding period last year. In absolute terms, revenue receipts stood at Rs 3.82 lakh crore at July-end 2019. During the entire year, the revenue receipts has been pegged at Rs 19.62 lakh crore. The capital expenditure was 31.8 percent of the BE. This compares with 37.1 percent in the year-ago period, the CGA said. Total expenditure during April-July period stood at Rs 9.47 lakh crore or 34 percent of the BE. It was 36.4 percent of BE in the corresponding period last fiscal. The government has pegged its total expenditure during the fiscal ending March 2020 at Rs 27.86 lakh crore. The CGA further said the fiscal deficit figure in monthly accounts during a financial year is not necessarily an indicator of fiscal deficit for the year. Its data gets impacted by temporal mismatch between flow of not-debt receipts and expenditure up to that month on account of various transitional factors both on receipt and expenditure side, which may get substantially offset by the end of the financial year.