Expecting revenues to be as per the Budget estimate, the government on Friday has decided to scale down its market borrowing to Rs 70,000 crore for the October-March period of 2018-19.

The borrowing programme will see an average weekly borrowing amount of Rs 11,000 crore for October-March via 21 auctions in H2. The H2 borrowing programme will end on March 8.

Subhash Chandra Garg, secretary, department of economic affairs (DEA), told that government will gross borrow Rs 2.47 lakh crore via bonds for October-March and added that borrowing programme has an element of buyback as well .

DEA secretary said there is no need to revise fiscal deficit target of 3.3 percent for FY19 as state of receipts is reasonably well and government don’t anticipate any slippages in the fiscal deficit.

But there will be no change in the net borrowing programme for this fiscal year, Garg said.

According to Garg, government will introduce consumer price inflation-indexed bonds in H2, which will have one or two issues in the current fiscal.

However, no target has been fixed for issuance of retail inflation linked bonds.

The cut in borrowing will be matched by reduction in buyback of government securities and enhanced flow from small savings scheme. The government resorts to market borrowings to bridge fiscal deficit.

For the first half of the current fiscal, the government decided to borrow Rs 2.88 lakh crore as compared to Rs 3.72 lakh crore in the same period of FY18.

According to the announced plan, the government will complete 47.56 percent of its the budgeted gross borrowing for the year in the first six months.

The government usually tries to complete at least 60 percent of its borrowing requirements in the first six months.

First Published:Sept 28, 2018 6:04 PM IST