New Delhi– The Indian government’s public debt increased to Rs 79.8 lakh crore by the end of the first quarter of the fiscal ending June, from Rs 77.98 lakh crore at end of the previous quarter, official data showed on Friday.
According to a Finance Ministry release, the government’s debt (including liabilities under the Public Account) accounted for 89.3 per cent of total outstanding liabilities at end-June 2018 with internal debt accounting for 83.0 per cent share.
“Nearly 24.9 per cent of the outstanding dated securities had a residual maturity of less than 5 years. The holding pattern indicates a share of 42.7 per cent for commercial banks and 23.5 per cent for insurance companies by end-March 2018,” it said.
“During the first quarter of fiscal year 2018-19, the government issued dated securities worth Rs 1,44,000 crore in 12 tranches, lower than Rs 1,68,000 crore in the first quarter of fiscal 2017-18.
“The temporary cash flow mismatches were bridged through issuances of Cash Management Bills in three tranches up to Rs 65,000 crore during the quarter,” it added.
The quarterly report on debt management also said that government securities’ (G-Sec) yields have shown a hardening trend in the April-June quarter with the increase in weighted average yield of primary issuances to 7.76 per cent from 7.34 per cent in the previous quarter reflecting the impact of both global and domestic developments.
“The manifestation of global developments being increase in crude oil prices, rate hike by the US Federal Reserve, rising geo-political tensions while domestic developments included weak rupee, rise in CPI (consumer price index), demand-supply imbalance for shorter-tenor securities and weak demand from FPIs (foreign portgolio investors),” it said.
The Finance Ministry set up a Public Debt Management Cell in 2016 to better manage the government’s debt management functions. (IANS)
