India’s fiscal deficit for April-November was ₹8.47 lakh crore ($98.90 billion), or 52.5% of the estimate for the financial year, government data showed on Tuesday.
Net tax receipts for the first eight months of the current financial year were at ₹14.43 lakh crore, or 56% of the annual target, compared with ₹14.36 lakh crore for the same period last year, the data showed.
India’s financial year runs from April through March.
Total government expenditure for the eight months was ₹27.41 lakh crore, or about 57% of the annual goal. The government spent ₹26.52 lakh crore in the same period last year.
Till November, the government’s capital expenditure, or spending on building physical infrastructure, was ₹5.13 lakh crore, or 46.2% of the annual target, as against ₹5.86 lakh crore for the same period a year earlier.
The spending in the current year has been slow due to the national elections and capital expenditure is likely to fall short of the annual target.
Some economists are factoring in a narrower fiscal deficit than the target of 4.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) for the Asian country on account of lower spending..