(FE)
Caught between the twin goals of treading the fiscal consolidation path and keeping the flagship schemes and other important welfare programmes adequately funded ahead of next year’s general election, the Centre has lined up plans to raise a massive Rs 1.7 lakh crore via the extra-budgetary resources (EBR) route in the current fiscal, up 110% from FY18. These loans, all of which will have to be serviced out of the Budget, will be mobilised through assorted public-sector entities.
If the debt being raised by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the ailing MTNL are added (which too are mostly financed out of the Budget as the revenue streams of the entities are not enough to service the loans), the total size of such budget-anchored EBRs could go up to Rs 2.43 lakh crore in FY19 as compared to Rs 1.42 lakh crore in FY18 and Rs 1.14 lakh crore in FY17.
As most of these public-sector debtors have no facility to pay back the loans from their resources — neither are supposed to as the monies are meant for government schemes — these are clearly liabilities on the exchequer.Including the railways and other PSUs, which can mostly fund their market borrowings, the EBRs by central agencies were Rs 3 lakh crore in FY18 and could be at least Rs 3.88 lakh crore in FY19 (The figure could be even higher if the railways ups its borrowings as suggested by the finance ministry recently).
