scispace - formally typeset
Open AccessOtherDOI

Debt Dynamics, Fiscal Deficit, and Stability in Government Borrowing in India: A Dynamic Panel Analysis

TLDR
In this article, the authors investigated whether the composition of expenditure of the subnational governments has an impact on the degree of indebtedness and found that government borrowing is more responsive to revenue expenditure than capital outlay and has more growth-augmenting effect through revenue expenditure.
Abstract
Despite the initiatives of the Finance Commission of India, fiscal performance has been deteriorating and increasingly diverging across Indian states. Given that the state governments are endowed with expenditure autonomy, this paper investigates whether the composition of expenditure of the subnational governments has an impact on the degree of indebtedness. A panel analysis for the 17 non-special category states over 1980-2013 indicates that apart from the budget structure, the state-specific factors affecting fiscal performance plays an important role in government borrowing. Curiously enough, government borrowing is more responsive to revenue expenditure than capital outlay and has more growth-augmenting effect through revenue expenditure.

read more

Content maybe subject to copyright    Report

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Tax-budget Deficit Relationships: Fiscalists¡¯ Platform for Deficit Financing Policy

TL;DR: In this article, the authors identified latent factors influencing the interrelationship among budget deficit finance, taxes, human capital and macroeconomic indicators, and proposed a viable deficit financing policy with component tax, budgetary, pricing, credit and macro economic policies.
Journal ArticleDOI

Disentangling the association between government debt and economic growth: a granger causality approach from indonesia

TL;DR: In this paper, a VECM Granger causality approach was chosen to investigate the causal link between government and economic growth in Indonesia between 1998 and 2018, and the results showed that economic growth has a unidirectional causal relationship with external public debt, but does not have such a relationship with domestic public debt.
Journal ArticleDOI

International comparative study of fiscal deficit in ukraine and hungary

TL;DR: In this article, a retrospective investigation of budget deficit in Ukraine and Hungary has been carried out, and a system of measures for public policy of government budget deficit reduction has been developed, namely: use of acceptable concept of budget balancing, ensuring stable economic growth, ensuring relative decrease in government spending, improving its efficiency, easing impact of related negative factors.
Journal ArticleDOI

Composition and trends in capital receipts of government of india: since 1990s

TL;DR: The contribution of market borrowing is nearly more than 50% in most of the years and the contribution of revenue receipts to total receipts is high whenever Indian economy performs better, on the other hand the economy undergoes difficulties the revenue is aroused through capital receipts to meet the government expenditure as mentioned in this paper .
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Tax-budget Deficit Relationships: Fiscalists¡¯ Platform for Deficit Financing Policy

TL;DR: In this article, the authors identified latent factors influencing the interrelationship among budget deficit finance, taxes, human capital and macroeconomic indicators, and proposed a viable deficit financing policy with component tax, budgetary, pricing, credit and macro economic policies.
Journal ArticleDOI

Disentangling the association between government debt and economic growth: a granger causality approach from indonesia

TL;DR: In this paper, a VECM Granger causality approach was chosen to investigate the causal link between government and economic growth in Indonesia between 1998 and 2018, and the results showed that economic growth has a unidirectional causal relationship with external public debt, but does not have such a relationship with domestic public debt.
Journal ArticleDOI

International comparative study of fiscal deficit in ukraine and hungary

TL;DR: In this article, a retrospective investigation of budget deficit in Ukraine and Hungary has been carried out, and a system of measures for public policy of government budget deficit reduction has been developed, namely: use of acceptable concept of budget balancing, ensuring stable economic growth, ensuring relative decrease in government spending, improving its efficiency, easing impact of related negative factors.
Frequently Asked Questions (18)
Q1. What are the major indicators used to analyze fiscal health of the state governments?

Three major deficit indicators, namely, the revenue deficit, the primary deficit, and the gross fiscal deficit are used to analyze fiscal health of the state governments. 

Given that the state governments are endowed with expenditure autonomy, this paper investigates whether the composition of expenditure of the subnational governments has an impact on the degree of indebtedness. 

8interest payments, inadequate recovery of user charges, rising expenditure on wages and salaries, and sluggishness in the central transfer of resources have been the major factors for the deterioration in the fiscal conditions of the Indian states (Reserve Bank of India 2002). 

If fiscal deficit is stationary, as in the case of co-integration between revenue and expenditure, higher interest payments, for example, implies lower spending in other components in the budget so that the co-movement of expenditure with revenues is maintained. 

The transfer through the Finance Commission, although restricted to the non-plan side of the budget, plays an important role in correcting the horizontal imbalance. 

A large debt ratio and corresponding larger proportion of interest payment is a cause of concern from the point of view of stability and sustainability of fiscal policy of the government of West Bengal. 

The major contribution of the present study to the literature consists of analyzing in detail the regional variation of deficit structure and its impact on government borrowing and growth at the subnational level in the context of the fiscal reforms prescribed by the Finance Commission of India. 

As long as government expenditure and revenue are stationary in first differences and are co-integrated, the fiscal position will be sustainable (Hakkio and Rush 1991). 

West Bengal’s poor performance (along with some other states) on revenue balance is due to the lack of revenue receipts to meet expenditure, including interest payments on past debt. 

In the empirical results expounded in this study, a growing debt ratio implies the inefficiency in fiscal management of the government in a sense that government spending on capital fails to contribute to the economic growth significantly. 

On the other hand, if government borrowing was used for capital formation, then growth potential of the economy would increase and the higher growth will ultimately reduce the share of public debt in GDP. 

Average interest payments during 2000–2013 were the highest (over 37% of the revenue receipt) for West Bengal followed by Punjab exhibiting nearly one-fourth of its revenue receipt as interest for public borrowing during the same period. 

The revenue deficits at the subnational level in India have persisted since the late 1980s, and the progressive deterioration in state finances started since the late 1990s. 

The authors observe that the increase in revenue expenditure has been mostly responsible for the higher level of borrowing at the subnational level in India. 

A sharp deterioration of financial health of the state governments during the past few decades has not only been because of state specific reasons, but also owing to the ever growing vertical imbalance (Report of the Tenth Finance Commission [GOI 1994]). 

While the states’ own revenue sources are not increasing fast enough to match their rising expenditure, central devolution and other assistance are not adequate to cover the gap. 

As mentioned above, the larger the proportion of government expenditure for accumulation of capital, the higher will be the growth rate of the economy and, in this case, the probability of debt sustainability will be higher. 

The sustainability of public debt ratio is an important issue as it can be regarded as an indicator of the efficiency of public finance.