The Ministry of Finance in its Quarterly Report on Debt Management has said that the government debt increased 1.7% to over Rs 76.94 lakh crore in the last quarter of financial year 2017-18 over the previous quarter. The debt was Rs 75.66 lakh crore as of December 2017. At this level, the ratio of outstanding liabilities of the central government to GDP worked-out to be 45.9% at end-March 2018.
The report further said that public debt accounted for 88.7% of the total outstanding liabilities at end-March 2018, while the share of ‘Public Account’ liabilities was 11.3%. About 26.2% of outstanding stock of G-Secs has a residual maturity of up to 5 years at the end of March 2018. This implies that over the next five years, around 5.2% of outstanding stock, on an average, needs to be repaid every year. Thus, the roll-over risk in the Debt Portfolio continues to be low.
The report also highlighted that during the fourth quarter of FY18, the central government issued dated securities worth Rs 67,000 crore as against issuance of dated securities of Rs 1,64,000 crore in the third quarter of FY 18 thus leading to cumulative issuances of Rs 5,88,000 crore. Moreover, it noted that in line with the Cash Management guidelines, the central government continued to time its expenditure as per pattern of receipts during the Quarter.