Centre's fiscal deficit 38% of full-year target at Aug-end: CGA data

The Centre's fiscal deficit stood at 38.1 per cent of the full-year target at the end of August, according to data released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) on Tuesday. The fiscal deficit was 27 per cent of the Budget Estimates (BE) of 2024-25 in the first five months of the previous financial year. In absolute terms, the fiscal deficit, or gap between the government's expenditure and revenue, was Rs 5,98,153 crore in the April-August period of 2025-26. The Centre estimates the fiscal deficit during 2025-26 at 4.4 per cent of the GDP, or Rs 15.69 lakh crore. The CGA data showed that the government received Rs 12.82 lakh crore (36.7 per cent of the corresponding BE 2025-26 of total receipts) up to August 2025. This comprised Rs 8.1 lakh crore tax revenue (net to Centre), Rs 4.4 lakh crore of non-tax revenue and Rs 31,970 crore of non-debt capital receipts. CGA said Rs 5.3 lakh crore has been transferred to state governments as devolution of share of taxes by the central government till August, which is Rs 74,431 crore higher than the previous year. The Centre's total expenditure was Rs 18.8 lakh crore (37.1 per cent of the corresponding BE 2025-26). Of this, Rs 14.49 lakh crore was on the revenue account and Rs 4.31 lakh crore on the capital account. Out of the total revenue expenditure, Rs 5,28,668 crore was on account of interest payments and Rs 1,50,377 crore on account of major subsidies. CGA said the fiscal deficit figure shown in monthly accounts during a financial year is not necessarily an indicator of fiscal deficit for the year, as it gets impacted by a temporal mismatch between the flow of non-debt receipts and expenditure up to that month.