New Delhi, Jan 29 || The government’s calibrated fiscal strategy has anchored India’s economic growth with stability amid global turbulence, according to the Economic Survey tabled in Parliament on Thursday.
It highlights that rising tax collections and focus on capital expenditure has reduced the fiscal deficit and strengthened the country’s macroeconomic fundamentals.
The Centre’s fiscal deficit is budgeted at 4.4 per cent of GDP in FY26 -- down from 4.8 per cent in the previous financial year. Over the same period, the revenue deficit as a proportion of GDP narrowed steadily, reaching its lowest level of 0.8 per cent in FY26, since FY09, thereby leaving a greater allocation for capital expenditure and reflecting a sustained improvement in the quality of expenditure, the survey states.
The Centre’s revenue receipts strengthened from an average of about 8.5 per cent of GDP in FY16–FY20 to 9.2 per cent of GDP in FY25. This improvement was driven by buoyant non-corporate tax collections, which rose from about 2.4 per cent of GDP pre-pandemic to around 3.3 per cent post-pandemic, the survey observes.