Govt confident of meeting fiscal deficit target without cutting capital expenditure: Finance Secretary

The govt should be able to meet the fiscal deficit target of 6.4 per cent of GDP in 2022-23 without having to cut capital expenditure, Finance Secretary TV Somanathan on Wednesday.

The secretary was interacting with the media after the release of GDP data for the first quarter of the current fiscal.

"We are on course to achieve our fiscal deficit target and it is not because of a slowdown in capital expenditure," said Somanathan, who is also the expenditure secretary.


The budgeted deficit for the fiscal is pegged at at Rs 16.61 lakh crore, or 6.4 per cent of GDP.

The government is set to focus on capital expenditure and try to control revenue expenditure to the extent possible, Somanathan further said.

"We have some large revenue contingencies, which are going to come in here in terms of fertiliser subsidies and food subsidies. So, the fact that revenue expenditure has been growing slightly less than proportionately to that is not a bad thing. It's a good thing," PTI quoted him as saying.

During Q1 of 2022-23, capital expenditure stood at Rs 1.75 lakh crore or 23.4 per cent of the budget estimate. This was 57 per cent higher compared to the corresponding period of the last year.

During April-July, Revenue expenditure has fallen to 28.7 per cent of the annual budget target from 29.9 per cent in the year-ago period.

As per the Budget document, the gross market borrowing through dated securities for 2022-23 will be Rs 14,95,000 crore.

On the GST collections, he said the Goods and Services Tax mop-up during August is likely to be in the range of Rs 1.42 - 1.43 lakh crore, or about 27 per cent more than August 2021.

The government would be releasing the GST data for August on Thursday.

In July, the GST collection was Rs 1.49 lakh crore, the second-highest level since its introduction in July 2017.


Inputs from PTI