Global rating agency Fitch has said that the Budget for 2013-14 will be an important event to gauge the government's commitment to fiscal consolidation and reform. Fitch ratings, which has already downgraded outlook on India's sovereign ratings to negative, said that the government policy pronouncements are positive signals to keep fiscal deficit under control and must carry on with reforms, which are the parameters rating actions will be judged.
The rating agency has emphasized that political and implementation risk remain significant and has said that India's patchy performance on policy implementation and the approach of elections in 2014 could impede fiscal consolidation, which is reflected in the Negative Outlook on India's 'BBB'-rating, the lowest rating in the investment category. Fitch added that, when it revised the outlook to negative from stable in June last year, it cited the risks to growth potential without faster structural reform.
However, praising policy announcements by the government, it said that public commitments and policy announcements by the Indian government so far in 2013 are encouraging signals that the finance ministry wants to maintain the momentum towards fiscal consolidation and structural reform generated since last summer. Further, it added that policy execution and its impact on trend growth will remain key to our ratings assessment.
The finance ministry has made some progress in capping the FY13 budget at 5.3% of GDP as a small surplus was recorded in December. Till December of 2012-13, the Centre’s fiscal deficit touched 78.8% of the budget estimate, which is a marginal improvement from 80.4 percent in corresponding period of last fiscal. However, the government had hiked the fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal year to 5.3 per cent of GDP from 5.1 per cent estimated in Budget.
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