The final form of the fiscal responsibility Bill, which commits the government to a stringent fiscal regime might well be considerably watered down.
According to top sources, the government is likely to dilute the annual time-table which the Bill seeks to outline for bringing down the fiscal deficit and revenue deficit to specific levels in the next five years.
As per the Bill, the fiscal deficit is to be brought down by 0.5 per cent per annum for the next five years to a level of 2 per cent by 2005-06 and also completely wipe out the revenue deficit by then.
Finance minister Yashwant Sinha had, in this year's budget itself, fixed the fiscal deficit target for 2001-02 at 4.7 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP), which is 0.5 percentage points less than last year
