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

The Centre's fiscal deficit stood at 38.1% 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% 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 ₹5,98,153 crore in the April-August period of 2025-26.

The Centre estimates the fiscal deficit during 2025-26 at 4.4% of the GDP, or ₹15.69 lakh crore.

The CGA data showed that the government received ₹12.82 lakh crore (36.7% of the corresponding BE 2025-26 of total receipts) up to August 2025.

This comprised ₹8.1 lakh crore tax revenue (net to Centre), ₹4.4 lakh crore of non-tax revenue and ₹31,970 crore of non-debt capital receipts.

CGA said ₹5.3 lakh crore has been transferred to state governments as devolution of share of taxes by the central government till August, which is ₹74,431 crore higher than the previous year.

The Centre's total expenditure was ₹18.8 lakh crore (37.1% of the corresponding BE 2025-26). Of this, ₹14.49 lakh crore was on the revenue account and ₹4.31 lakh crore on the capital account. Out of the total revenue expenditure, ₹5,28,668 crore was on account of interest payments and ₹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.