India's April-July fiscal deficit at 92 per cent of full year target

New Delhi: India's April-July fiscal deficit -- at Rs 5.05 lakh crore -- stood at 92.4 per cent of the full year Budget target of Rs 5.46 lakh crore, official data showed here on Thursday.

The data furnished by the Comptroller General of Accounts (CGA) showed that April-July fiscal deficit was 73.7 per cent of the Budget in the like period of the last fiscal.

But within the first four months of the fiscal 2017-18, it had touched 92.4 per cent of the full year target.

The 2017-18 deficit -- the difference between revenue and expenditure -- has been pegged at Rs 5.46 lakh crore for 2017-18, as compared to the deficit of Rs 5.34 lakh crore for the last fiscal.

According to the CGA data, tax revenue during the period under review was Rs 2.57 lakh crore, or 21 per cent of the estimates, while total receipts -- from revenue and non-debt capital -- during the fiscal's first four months were Rs 3.03 lakh crore, or 19 per cent of the estimates for the current year.

The data revealed that total expenditure during the April-July period was Rs 8.08 lakh crore, or 37.7 per cent of the entire fiscal's estimate. The revenue deficit during the period under review was over Rs 4.22 lakh crore, or 131.2 per cent, of the estimates.

Also India's GDP growth for the first quarter of the current fiscal ended June slowed down to 5.7 per cent, from 6.1 per cent reported for the fourth quarter of 2016-17, official data showed here on Thursday.

According to data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the GDP for Q1 stood at Rs 31.10 lakh crore, or a growth of 5.7 per cent, compared with 6.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal.

The drop in growth was even sharper compared to the like quarter a year ago when the country's GDP grew at 7.9 per cent.