(PTI)
The government today said it has decided to make additional borrowing of Rs 50,000 crore this fiscal through dated securities, a move that may put burden on the fiscal deficit target of 3.2 per cent of GDP. However, there will be no change in the net borrowing as envisaged in the Budget for 2017-18, a Finance Ministry statement said. After the review of the borrowing programme with the RBI, it was decided that “the government will raise additional market borrowings of Rs 50,000 crore only in fiscal FY’18 through dated Government securities.” Besides, it will trim down the T-Bills from present collections of Rs 86,203 crore to Rs 25,006 crore by March 2018. T-Bills are securities with short-term duration of less than one year while dated securities have maturity of over five years. “The government will thus, between now and March 2018, not be raising any net additional borrowing (T-Bills will be run down by Rs 61,203 crore and additional G-Sec borrowing will be Rs 50,000 crore),” it said. In the Budget for 2017-18, gross and net market borrowing were pegged at Rs 5.80 lakh crore and Rs 4.23 lakh crore respectively with Rs 3.48 lakh crore being raised (net) from dated Government securities and Rs 2,002 crore from T-bills, a Finance Ministry statement said.
