In order to avoid expenditure rush in the last month of the fiscal, the Finance Ministry has asked other ministries not to breach financial propriety and cap spending in March to 15 per cent ceiling. It has also asked various government departments and ministries, which are not on the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) portal, to update it about their expenditure and revenue collections on a daily basis.
While noting that regular sanctions and bills should be put on the PFMS portal by March 20, the Finance Ministry has said that only “very few” expenditure requests would be processed after that. It has also asked the CBDT and CBEC to update the daily tax collection figures to the expenditure department and added that the last quarter expenditure must be limited to actual procurement of goods and services and reimbursement of expenditure already occurred.
The Fiscal deficit, the gap between government expenditure and revenue collection, budgeted at Rs 5.33 lakh crore, or 3.5 per cent of GDP for the current fiscal ending March, shot up to Rs 5.64 lakh crore, or 105.7 per cent of the full-year target, at the end of January.