Parliament Approves Additional Spending Of Rs 58,378 Cr In Current Fiscal

Parliament on Tuesday gave its approval for a net additional spending of Rs 58,378 crore in the current fiscal ending March 2024, with a large chunk allocated to MGNREGA and fertiliser subsidies. The gross additional spending would be more than Rs 1.29 lakh crore, out of which Rs 70,968 crore would be matched by savings and receipts.

On Tuesday, Rajya Sabha returned the two appropriation bills to Lok Sabha after a brief discussion. Most of the members who participated in the discussion were from the Treasury benches as a large number of Opposition members are suspended from the House. Opposition members who were present did not participate in the discussion.

Last week, Lok Sabha passed the supplementary demands for grants after a short discussion. Replying to the discussion on Supplementary Demands for Grants in Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary on Tuesday highlighted the key aspects of the first batch of demands for grants. According to the demands for grants, the net additional spending by the government would be Rs 58,378.21 crore in the current fiscal.

The additional expenditure includes Rs 13,351 crore towards fertiliser subsidies and about Rs 7,000 crore towards spending by the Department of Food and Public Distribution. An additional outgo of Rs 9,200 crore is towards spending by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and Rs 14,524 crore by the Ministry of Rural Development towards MGNREGA is included in the supplementary demands.

The total supplementary demands for spending by the Ministry of External Affairs is Rs 20,000 crore, which would be adjusted against the reduction of expenditure of over Rs 9,000 crore. For the full 2023-24 financial year, the government has budgeted the fiscal deficit to be Rs 17.86 lakh crore or 5.9 per cent of the GDP. The April-October fiscal deficit was 45.6 per cent of the full-year Budget Estimate of the last fiscal.

(PTI)