India's National Debt moves up to Rs 40.83 lakh cr in Q4 of 2013 Fiscal

According to the Quarterly Report, Indian Government debt rose 0.4 per cent to over Rs 40.83 lakh crore in the January-March period of 2012-13 fiscal, over the previous quarter. 

The Quarterly Report on Debt Management says, the internal debt is 91.1 per cent of the public debt, as against to 90.7 per cent in October-December quarter.

The report also said, Government's outstanding internal debt (owed to the lenders within the country) at Rs 37,18,633 crore constituted 37.1 per cent of the GDP, compared to 36.8 per cent at the end December 2012.

Marketable securities (consisting of Rupee denominated dated securities and treasury bills) account for 82.3 per cent of total public debt, compared with 81.9 per cent at end-December 2012.

The change in dynamics of outstanding Debt (Dated Securities) implies that over the next five years, on an average, slightly more than 6.0 per cent of outstanding stock needs to be rolled over every year. Thus, the rollover risk in the debt portfolio remained low.

The RBI reduced CRR by 25 basis points to 4 per cent, effective January 29, 2013 and purchased securities worth Rs 33,549 crore through Open Market Operation (OMO) auctions during the quarter. RBI also reduced repo rate to 7.50 per cent during the quarter in two steps of 25 basis points each. The net amount provided under Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF) operations remained consistently high during the quarter.  

Increased foreign investment inflow enabled easing of some pressure on rupee which remained under stress due to widening of trade deficit.

The report said, "Holding of securities by FIIs, mutual funds, and financial institutions and ‘others category’ were higher at end of Q3 of FY13 compared with their position a quarter ago."

Total expenditure during April-February period at 85.2 per cent of revised estimates (RE) was higher than 83.9 per cent during the same period of previous fiscal.

Due to higher expenditure, revenue deficit and fiscal deficit during April-February, at 101.2 per cent and 97.4 per cent of RE, were higher than 96.6 per cent and 94.6 per cent respectively, in the year-ago period, it said.