Fiscal deficit would be brought down to below 4.5 per cent by 2025-26, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Wednesday.
Tabling her fifth budget, she said tax receipts for the next fiscal are budgeted at Rs 23.3 lakh crore and states would be allowed 3.5 per cent of GDP as fiscal deficit.
To finance the fiscal deficit in 2023-24, net market borrowing from dated securities is estimated at Rs 11.8 lakh crore, Sitharaman said while presenting the Union budget for 2023-24 in the Lok Sabha.
She retained the fiscal deficit target of 6.4 per cent in the revised estimate for FY2022-23 and reduced it to 5.9 per cent for the next fiscal. The government had pegged the fiscal deficit at at 6.4 per cent of the GDP for the current financial year.
The Revised Estimates for 2021-22 indicate a fiscal deficit of Rs 15,91,089 crore as against the Budget Estimates of Rs 15,06,812 crore.
The finance minister also announced a new savings scheme, Mahila Samman Savings Certificate, for two years to 2025 with a maximum deposit limit of Rs 2 lakh and an interest rate of 7.5 per cent.
She said 50-year interest-free loans to state governments have to be spent on capital expenditure within 2023-24.
