Government’s finances have shown improvement in August with fiscal deficit at 94.7 per cent of the Budget Estimate (BE), mainly on account of better expenditure management, as per an official data.
The deficit was at 96.1 per cent of BE at August-end of the last financial year.
In actual terms, the fiscal deficit or gap between the total expenditure and receipts was Rs 5.91 lakh crore in the first five months period of 2018-19 financial year.
The Government has budgeted to cut fiscal deficit to 3.3 per cent of GDP in 2018-19 from 3.53 per cent in the previous year.
The fiscal deficit target for 2018-19 is Rs 6.24 lakh crore.
As per the data released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA), the tax collection (net) at end-August was Rs 3.66 lakh crore or 24.7 per cent of BE.
The total receipts of the Government during April-August 2018 were Rs 4.79 lakh crore or 26.4 per cent of BE. In the similar period of 2017-18, the collection was 26.6 per cent of BE.