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Announcing borrowing calendar for the next financial year, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg on Friday said the government will raise Rs 4.42 lakh crore through gilts in the first half of FY20.
The borrowing for the second half is set at Rs 2.68 lakh crore.
Interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal in Budget for FY20 had pegged gross borrowing at Rs 7.1 lakh crore, higher than Rs 5.71 lakh crore estimated for the ongoing fiscal.
The Centre will auction Rs 17,000 crore of gilts per week during April-September.
April to September borrowing will be 62.30 per cent of FY20’s total gross borrowing, Garg said.
The high borrowing is due to repayment obligations.
“There is repayment of obligation of Rs 1.02 lakh crore in the first half on new financial year and Rs 1.35 lakh crore in the second half,” he added.
The government is also planning to introduce new seven-year benchmark government security and may extended 15-19 years gilt maturity bracket to 15-24 years.
The government will borrow Rs 20,000 crore through treasury bills every week in April-June.
Gilt buybacks are most likely to happen in H2FY20.
Garg addressing a press conference said the government will meet 3.4 per cent fiscal deficit target for the ongoing financial year.
Earlier, a government data showed that current account deficit widened to 2.5 per cent of GDP in third quarter of the current fiscal from 2.1 per cent a year ago, primarily on account of a higher trade deficit.
In absolute terms, the CAD, or the gap between inflow and outflow of foreign exchange in the current account, was $16.9 billion in the October-December 2018 period, up from $13.7 billion in the year-ago period, PTI reported.
