As I keep saying, the union budget at its heart is the presentation of the financial accounts of the government or to put it simply, on what it plans to spend money on, during the course of a year and how does it plan to earn and arrange for that money.
Given this, a lot of analysis happens on the issue of what the government plans to spend money on, during the course of a particular year. A similar thing has happened this time around as well, with journalists, analysts and economists, digging into the budget in trying to figure out where exactly is the government planning to spend money in 2021-22 and where it has spent its money in 2020-21.
The trouble is that like previous years this year as well most analysis has missed out on the biggest expenditure item in the government budget, which is interest payments. Almost every government spends more than what it earns and the difference is referred to as the fiscal deficit. This deficit is largely financed through the government borrowing by issuing bonds. An interest needs to be paid on these bonds every year.
This interest is the largest expenditure in the government’s budget, even though it rarely gets talked about.
Take a look at the following graph, which plots the interest payments on the outstanding borrowing of the union government.
Source: Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.
2020-21 – Revised estimate.
2021-22 – Budget estimate.
As can be seen from the above chart, the interest payments have been going up over the years and are expected to be at around Rs 8.1 lakh crore in 2021-22 . Now Rs 8.1 lakh crore on its own sounds like a large number, but just looking at the absolute number is not the right way to go about things in this case.
Let’s look at what proportion of overall expenditure of the union government have interest payments formed over the years.
Source: Author calculations on data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.
As per this graph, interest payments in 2020-21 formed a little over one-fifth of total expenditure and this is an improvement on the situation that prevailed before. But this interpretation is wrong, simply because the overall expenditure of the government also includes money that it does not earn.
Hence, a government can always borrow more and spend more in a particular year leading to a higher expenditure number and thus, the interest payments as a proportion of overall expenditure will come down. But that doesn’t mean things have improved.
Let’s look at another chart. This plots the interest payments as a proportion of net tax revenue earned by the union government. Net tax revenue is what remains with the central government after sharing a certain proportion of the gross tax revenue (or to put it simply overall tax collections) with the state governments.
Source: Author calculations on data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.
The above chart gives us a clear picture of the prevailing situation. In 2017-18, the interest payments formed 42.6% of the tax revenues earned by the union government. They have been rising since then and in 2020-21 and 2021-22 are expected to touch 51.5% and 52.4%, respectively.
What does this mean? It means that more than half of the government’s taxes are going towards paying interest on its outstanding loans, leaving very little money for anything else, unless the government earns money through other ways or borrows money or uses other ways to finance the fiscal deficit.
One way for the government to earn more money is through the sale of its stakes in public sector enterprises. In 2020-21, the government had hoped to earn Rs 2.1 lakh crore through this route. This turned out to be a very ambitious target and the government is now hoping to earn Rs 32,000 crore through this route during 2020-21.
The disinvestment target for 2021-22 has been set at Rs 1.75 lakh crore. It is very important for the government to earn this money else it will have to borrow more to meet the expenditure. This will mean higher interest payments in the years to come which will either lead to the government having to cut expenditure or having to borrow even more to meet the expenditure. More borrowing will lead to even more interest on the outstanding debt.
This will have to be paid by implementing higher taxes on the taxpayers and many of these taxpayers will be newer ones, just entering the workforce. This is precisely the way the current generation passes on its liabilities to the next one.
Also, as the outstanding debt matures and needs to be repaid, the government will have to borrow more to repay this debt. Hence, a greater proportion of the borrowing will just go towards repaying debt which is maturing. This will become a debt spiral and needs to be best avoided.
There is another thing that is happening and needs to be brought to notice. The government finances a major part of the fiscal deficit through borrowing. So, let’s take the case of 2020-21. The fiscal deficit for the year is expected to be at Rs 18.49 lakh crore.
A bulk of this deficit will be financed by borrowing Rs 12.74 lakh crore from the market. Where does the remaining money to fill the gap come from? A bulk of it comes from the small savings schemes.
The small savings schemes currently in force are: Post Office Savings Account, National Savings Time Deposits ( 1,2,3 & 5 years), National Savings Recurring Deposits, National Savings Monthly Income Scheme Account, Senior Citizens Savings Scheme, National Savings Certificate, Public Provident Fund, KisanVikas Patra and Sukanya Samriddhi Account.
The money coming into these schemes net of disbursements that happen during the course of the year, is used to finance the fiscal deficit of the union government.
This has been rising at an astonishing pace over the years, as can be seen from the following chart.
Source: Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.
In 2012-13, the amount had stood at Rs 8,626 crore and it has since risen to more than Rs 4.80 lakh crore. While this amount does not end up as a debt of the government, it is a liability that the government does need to repay over the years.
Also, this is money that is coming from the public savings at the end of the day. In order to ensure that money keeps coming into these schemes, the government will have to continue offering a higher rate of interest on these schemes in comparison to bank fixed deposits.
Hence, the perpetual complaint of the bankers is likely to stay, given that the government needs this money to continue financing its high fiscal deficit. The other option is to borrow directly from the market and increase its outstanding debt figure, which the government wants to avoid beyond a point.
What this tells us is that all hasn’t been well on the government finances front over the last few years, and covid has only made it worse. One reason for this lies in the constant fall in the taxes collected by the government as a proportion of the gross domestic product (GDP), over the years.
The net tax revenue of the union government stood at 8.97% of the GDP in 2007-08. It has since fallen and was at 6.67% of the GDP in 2019-20. In 2020-21, it is expected to be at 6.90% of the GDP. The figure is higher in 2020-21 simply because of the size of the Indian economy, as represented by the GDP, is expected to contract more than the taxes collected by the government during the year.
This fall in tax collections and the dependence of the government on other ways of financing its fiscal deficit, also leads to the question whether the size of the Indian economy or its GDP, is being properly measured. Over the years, the informal part of the Indian economy has seen huge destruction and the question is, does this destruction reflect properly in the GDP figures being published over the years. This is a question well worth asking given that if the GDP is growing why have tax collections been falling?
To conclude, it does seem the government understands the financial situation it is headed towards. Hence, an ambitious target for disinvestment has been set. Over and above this, it also has plans of monetising physical assets including surplus land. Hopefully, this will take off soon. .
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