The Finance Ministry today ruled out more market borrowings during the remaining period of the fiscal saying it will stick to 5.3 per cent fiscal deficit target.

“We will not go into the market for additional borrowings this fiscal and will be able to keep the fiscal deficit at 5.3 per cent of GDP,” Economic Affairs Secretary, Arvind Mayaram said here this evening.

He was talking on the sidelines of an event to launch the Financial Technologies-promoted MCX-SX, which is the third major stock exchange.

The government has initially budgeted a marketing borrowing target of Rs 5,13,590 crore or 5.1 per cent fiscal deficit of GDP for this fiscal, which was later revised upwards to 5.3 per cent in October, increasing the market borrowing by another Rs 23,000 crore.

On the revenue side, with three divestments, the government has already met nearly 73 per cent (around Rs 21,700 crore out of Rs 30,000 crore) of its divestment target and is confident of meeting nearly 90 per cent with three more sell-offs in SAIL, Nalco and MMTC in the remaining days of the fiscal.

With the government in expenditure cutting mode, various ministries are bracing for reduction in their annual budgets for the year 2013-14 which could be even up to 24 per cent of this fiscal.

The CGA data revealed that during April-December 2012, the revenue receipts stood at Rs 5,70,536 crore or 61 per cent of the estimate. The performance on revenue mop up front during the period at 61 per cent of the estimate was lower than 63.1 per cent achieved during April-December 2011.

The government is eyeing Rs 9,35,685 crore revenue this fiscal. Tax collection (Rs 4,84,156 crore) slipped to 62.8 per cent of the Budget estimate compared to 63.3 per cent achieved in the same period last year.

The Government receipts during the period totalled Rs 5,86,424 crore while the expenditure worked out at Rs 9,91,123 crore.

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