Days ahead of the Union Budget, the N K Singh-headed panel today submitted its four-volume report on modifying the 13-year old Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
The five-member panel was tasked to review the FRBM Act in view of suggestions that there should be a broad range for government's fiscal deficit in place of the current practice of having a fixed target.
"The government will examine the FRBM Committee Report and take appropriate action," the Finance Ministry said.
Committee members RBI Governor Urjit R Patel, former Finance Secretary Sumit Bose, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, and Director of NIPFP Rathin Roy were present at the time of presentation of the report.
When asked when the report would be made public, Singh said "that is in the hands of the government, whether they wish or do not wish to make it public".
Finance Minister Jaitley will be presenting the Budget for 2017-18 on February 1.
Among other things, the Committee was asked to examine the need and feasibility of having a 'fiscal deficit range' as the target in place of the existing fixed numbers (percentage of GDP) as the goal.
Singh said the committee has discharged its obligation in giving the report for the central government to consider.
The first volume of the report addresses the issue of the fiscal policy, fiscal roadmap, international experience and recommendations therein.
Volume two refers to international experience in which "we got presentations from a lot of organisations particularly OECD, the World Bank, the ILO", Singh told reporters.
He said the third volume deals with Centre-State issues.
States as well as central ministries have given their views, but "to some extent, direct relationship between state related fiscal issues were somewhat tenuous...A responsible growth, debt and fiscal framework, debt issues are pretty frontal in that" he said.
The fourth volume is "what we call the domain experts", both national and international.
"It deals with their own views -- what they believe the appropriate fiscal policy would be. So, we have addressed the entire terms of reference with the committee," Singh said and added "we have had FRBM reports but the issue of debt had remained somewhat unaddressed".
In May 2016, the government had formed the five-member committee under former revenue secretary Singh to review the working of the FRBM Act.
The Committee had wide ranging Terms of Reference (ToR)
to comprehensively review the existing FRBM Act in the light of contemporary changes, past outcomes, global economic developments, best international practices and to recommend the future fiscal framework and roadmap for the country.
The Committee was originally slated to submit its report by October 31. However, the ToR were enlarged to seek the panel's views on certain recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission and the Expenditure Management Commission.
These primarily related to strengthening the institutional framework on fiscal matters as well as certain issues connected with new capital expenditures in the budget.
The committee was set up to review the working of FRBM Act over the last 13 years and suggest the way forward "keeping in view the broad objective of fiscal consolidation and prudence and the changes required in the context of the uncertainty and volatility in the global economy".
While announcing the intention of the government to set up a committee to examine the FRBM Act, Jaitley in his Budget speech in February had said "there is a school of thought which believes that instead of fixed numbers as fiscal deficit targets, it may be better to have a fiscal deficit range as the target, which would give necessary policy space to the government to deal with dynamic situations".
