Govt's public debt ticks up 2.1% in Sep quarter

The public debt of the central government provisionally rose 2.1% in July-September this fiscal on a quarterly basis.

The total public debt (excluding liabilities under the 'public account') of the government increased to Rs 54.12 lakh crore at September-end 2015, from Rs 53.01 lakh crore at June-end 2015, said the Quarterly Report on Debt Management for July-September 2015.

"This represented a quarter-on-quarter (qoq) increase of 2.1% (provisional) compared with an increase of 3.2% in the previous quarter (first quarter of 2015-16)," it said.

Internal debt constituted 92.1% of public debt compared with 92.3% in the previous quarter.

Marketable securities (consisting of rupee-denominated dated securities and treasury bills) accounted for 84.5% of total public debt, the same level as on end-June 2015.

About 27.2% of outstanding stock has a residual maturity of up to 5 years, which implies that over the next five years, on an average, around 5.4% of outstanding stock needs to be rolled over every year.

"Thus, the rollover risk in debt portfolio continues to be low. The implementation of budgeted buyback/switches in coming months is expected to reduce rollover risk further," the report said.

As per the report, the outstanding internal debt of the government at Rs 49.85 lakh crore constituted 37.4% of GDP at September-end 2015 compared with 37.8% at June-end 2015.

During the second quarter of the fiscal, the government issued dated securities worth Rs 1.71 lakh crore, taking gross borrowings during first half of 2015-16 to Rs 3.51 lakh crore, or 58.5% of Budget Estimate (BE), vis-a-vis 58.7% of BE in first half of 2014-15.

"The market borrowings calendar for the second half of 2015-16 have been adjusted down by Rs 15,000 crore to take into account expected government borrowings through the Sovereign Gold Bond and Gold Monetisation Scheme," the report said.

The market saw a sharp correction in mid-August 2015 on account of devaluation of Chinese yuan and concerns over slowdown in the Chinese economy, which led to massive sell-off across asset classes globally.