By Nikunj Ohri
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India’s fiscal deficit for fiscal 2023/24 was lower than its full-year target of 5.8% of the gross domestic product due to a small cut in expenditure, government data showed on Friday.
The country’s fiscal deficit stood at 5.63% of gross domestic product for the financial year that ended on March 31.
The budget gap, or fiscal deficit, was 16.54 trillion rupees ($198.34 billion), or 95.3% of the estimate, even though the government continued its record infrastructure spending to boost the economy.
The Indian economy grew by 8.2% in 2023/24, data released on Friday showed. India’s fiscal year starts from April 1 and runs through March 31.
Net tax receipts for 2023/24 were higher than projected at 23.27 trillion rupees, and 100.1% of the full-year target, the data showed.
Total expenditure came in at 44.43 trillion rupees, or 99% of the targeted spend for that year.
The government’s capital spending on infrastructure projects was 9.49 trillion rupees.
Meanwhile, for April, the first month of the current financial year, the fiscal deficit was 2.1 trillion rupees, or 12.5% of the target.
The government has set a fiscal deficit target of 5.1% for the current financial year, but expectation of a narrower deficit has built up due to the surprise $25 billion dividend transfer by the Reserve Bank of India to the government earlier this month.
(Reporting by Nikunj Ohri and Sarita Chaganti Singh; Editing by Varun H K and Savio D’Souza)
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