The Centre has completed 98.57 per cent (Rs 76,251 crore) of the net government borrowing programme worth Rs 77,353 crore even before the end of first eight months of the current fiscal.
In gross terms, 90.65 per cent (Rs 1,07,750 crore) of the borrowing programme worth Rs 1,18,852 crore is already completed. In the current week itself, the government has completed 8.41 per cent of the gross government borrowing.
During the corresponding period of the last fiscal, the government had only completed 76.99 per cent (Rs 88,683 crore) of gross borrowing worth Rs 1,15,183 crore, and 77.28 per cent (Rs 57,026 crore) of the net borrowing programme worth Rs 73,787 crore.
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As a matter of fact, after Rs 10,000 crore worth issues (including Rs 4,000 crore private placement with the Reserve Bank of India) in the current week, another Rs 5,850 crore of bond issues are required to complete the government's borrowing. The rest will be completed via the 364-day treasury bill issues.
However, the high pace of borrowing in the current fiscal gives rise to the possibility of a slippage in the gross borrowing programme in a Rs 15,000-25,000 crore range. However, a possible transfer of funds from the public sector units will reduce the amount of overshooting.
Two important features of the government borrowing so far was the lower cost and longer maturity profile. The weighted average of the maturity profile of the paper issued this year is 12.96-year compared with 10.6 years in the previous financial year.
The weighted average interest on the papers issued so far was 10.12 per cent down from 10.95 per cent in 2000-01. In the current year, only Rs 9,000 crore has been raised via papers with below 10-year maturity.