The country’s federal fiscal deficit in the seven months to end-October stood at Rs 9.53 lakh crore, or 126.7 per cent of the budgeted target for the whole fiscal year, government data showed on Friday.
Net tax receipts were Rs 5.76 lakh crore, down 15.7 per cent from a year ago, while total expenditure was Rs 16.6 lakh crore, the data showed.
The deficit is predicted to exceed 8 per cent of GDP in the 2020/21 fiscal year that ends in March 2021, economists said, from initial government estimates of 3.5 per cent, mainly due to a sharp economic contraction triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.