State’s total outstanding liabilities inching closer to ₹4.5 lakh crore mark by the end of this fiscal

The State Government’s total outstanding liabilities are expected to be ₹4.42 lakh crore, closer to ₹4.5 lakh crore mark, at the end of the current financial year.

This is around ₹50,000 crore higher than the total outstanding liabilities at the end of previous fiscal when the liabilities were ₹3.93 lakh crore. Of the total liabilities in the current fiscal, internal debt accounted to ₹3.72 lakh crore and loans from the Centre constituted ₹14,727 crore while liability on account of provident fund amounted to ₹16,904 crore.

Interest payments, according to Budget estimates, were however lesser than the previous fiscal years. The government paid net interest of ₹21,553 crore in 2022-23 and ₹23,308 crore in 2023-24 higher than the amounts projected in the Budget estimates. But, it has projected the outgo through interest payments at ₹17,017 crore for the current fiscal, according to “State Finances: A Study of Budgets” released by the Reserve Bank of India.

Interestingly, the State incurred an expenditure of ₹15,152 crore at the end of October with five more months remaining for the fiscal to end as revealed by the provisional data submitted to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

Another area where the State pinned hopes for financial resources appears to be devolution and transfer of resources from the Central Government. This could be seen from the fact that the Government has projected the gross devolutions from the Centre for 2024-25 at ₹51,752 crore and net devolution of ₹51,090 crore. The net devolution and transfer of resources from the Centre, according to revised estimates of 2023-24, was ₹34,988 crore and it was ₹34,739 crore in the preceding year.

The State’s gross fiscal deficit for the current fiscal is pegged at ₹49,255 crore shade higher than ₹49,372 crore of the revised estimates of 2023-24. Development expenditure for the current fiscal had seen a significant rise to ₹2.28 lakh crore, 39.9% higher than ₹1.62 lakh crore of the revised estimates of the previous financial year.