Fiscal deficit down at 4.9% as revenues rise

The government's total internal debt came down to levels around 4.89 per cent at the end of the 2012-13 financial year, from around 5.2 per cent in the previous fiscal, helped by rising revenue collections and slowing of government spending, finance minister P Chidambaram said.

He said since there is a limit to which expenditure can and should be curbed, the government would now focus on further raising revenues to bring down deficit to below 4.8 per cent of GDP, and may be better still, in the current financial year.

''I don't wish to compress expenditure, therefore revenues have to go up... For 2013-14, have to do much better than 4.8 per cent,'' he said.

Chidambaram said tax revenue has gone up by Rs7,000 crore during the 2012-13 fiscal while several ministries have failed to utilise the funds allocated under the annual plan.

"Many of the ministries could not spend money given in the revised estimates. Also, there was some additional tax revenue of about Rs7,000 crore. So it has come down to 4.9 per cent," he said.

The government has been able to restrict revenue deficit to 3.6 per cent of GDP in 2012-13, against 3.9 per cent estimated earlier. Also non-tax revenues were higher by about Rs8,000-10,000 crore. Besides, there was a saving on plan expenditure of about Rs6,000 crore.

He said the government is committed to fiscal prudence as proposed in the budget. The budget had proposed to lower fiscal deficit to 4.8 per cent of GDP in 2013-14 and reduce it gradually to 3 per cent by 2016-17.

The government had budgeted revenue realisation for 2012-13 fiscal at Rs10,38,000 crore against total planned expenditure of Rs14,30,000 crore.