The Centre has managed to rein in the fiscal deficit for the year 2000-01 to 5.21 per cent thanks to a massive saving in expenditure of Rs 15,913 crore compensating for a sizeable shortfall in total revenue collection of Rs 15,178 crore.
The final figures of Union government accounts released by the Controller General of Accounts today shows that the government has only achieved 92.6 per cent of the revenue collection target.
The tax shortfall is Rs 9,210 crore while the non-tax revenue is also less by Rs 5,968 crore despite a record dividend transfer of over Rs 9000 crore by RBI this year.
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Disinvestment receipts has also fallen short of the revised lower target of Rs 2,500 crore toting only Rs 2,177 crore.
This has reduced the total non-debt capital receipts target, which has fallen short of the Rs 14,253 crore by a substantial 16 per cent.
This is however better than the record of the government in 1999-2000 when it had only reached 77.3 per cent of the target.
The release of the data was keenly awaited this time as the government had acknowledged that it will be unable to maintain the budget announcement of 5.1 per cent for the fiscal year 2000-01.
Senior officials including expenditure secretary CM Vasudev had said that the fiscal deficit can reach near 5.3 per cent.
On the expenditure side the government has actually squeezed plan expenditure by Rs 2,770 crore.
The total actual plan expenditure at Rs 83,468 crore is therefore 96 per cent of the target, almost the same percentage as in 1999-2000.
And the impact has been more severe on plan capital expenditure which is only 91.4 per cent of the target, which will affect the rate of investment in the economy.
On the positive side, the major impact of the cut in expenditure is in non plan expenditure at Rs 236,142 crore which is less than the target of Rs 249,285 crore by Rs 13143 crore.