No escape from extra borrowing

Despite growth likely in the second half of the year, revenue gap will be large leading to higher borrowing and expenditure management

What would be the extent of deviation in the government’s revenue and expenditure from what was projected in February 2020 in the Budget Estimate for the current financial year? An answer to this question lies partially in the provisional actuals of the Union government’s revenue and expenditure, already available for the first half of 2020-21.

According to these numbers, the Centre’s net tax revenue collections are estimated at Rs 4.58 trillion, just about 28 per cent of the full year’s target. The performance of non-tax revenue and disinvestment receipts is worse at just about 24 per cent and 3 per cent