Govt plans to lower non-plan expenditure to meet fiscal deficit target for FY14: Finance Minister

03 Oct 2013 Evaluate

Amid rising concerns over the fiscal deficit number touching around three-fourths of the budget estimate in the first five months of the fiscal, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the government is planning to trim non-plan expenditure in order to meet the fiscal deficit target of 4.8 percent for the current fiscal.

Recently, to cut government spending in non-critical areas, the government has announced a slew of austerity measures including banning government departments for holding meetings in 5-star hotels among others. Meanwhile, the government has been introducing austerity measures since 2008-09. Earlier, in November 2012, austerity measures announced by government helped it to contain the fiscal deficit at 4.9 percent of GDP in FY13, against the budgeted target of 5.1 percent of GDP.

By adding further, Finance Minister said that the government had deliberately front-loaded the planned expenditure, which was running around 4-5 per cent ahead of the year earlier, as the borrowing reached 74.6 percent.

Chidambaram said he was confident on Indian economy’s growth to recover in the second half of this fiscal year on the back of rising core sector growth, higher exports and credit expansion to some sectors. Buoyed by better-than-expected Q1 current account deficit (CAD) numbers at 4.9 percent of GDP, Chidambaram said that CAD for the current fiscal will be contained lower than initially projected. The government has set a target to contain CAD at $70 billion or 3.7 percent of GDP for the financial year. 

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