New Delhi: Ruling out outward pressure on interest rates in the near future because of high market borrowings, the government on Tuesday said it will not go for additional borrowings due to the impact of erratic monsoons as tax receipts are expected to be robust.
"Don't see any spike in interest rates in foreseeable future," Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla told reporters when asked whether huge market borrowings of the government will jack-up interest rates.
On whether the government will go for extra borrowing to meet additional expenditure due to week monsoon, he said expenditure needs will be met by way of taxes and existing budgetary provisions.
"We don't need to borrow extra. We will get more by way of taxes and if the need be we will try to adjust within existing budgetary provisions," Chawla said on the sidelines of the meeting of Regional Rural Bank chiefs with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
He said, targets for the current fiscal of direct taxes have already been raised based on the performance during the first four months of 2009-10.
The Finance Minister has raised the target of direct tax collections to Rs four lakh crore for the current fiscal from the earlier Rs 3,70,000 crore.
In the first four months of the current fiscal direct tax collection stood at Rs 73,990 crore, about three percent higher than Rs 71,648 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal.
Indirect tax collections are also likely to be better in the second quarter of the fiscal, after customs duty collections topped Rs 18,000 crore in the first quarter.
The government has pegged its market borrowings at a whopping over Rs 4.5 lakh crore for the current fiscal to meet its burgeoning expenditure, necessitated by the need to perk up the flowing down economy.
Further, Finance Secretary Chawla said the government would come up with a matching amount of bond auction of Rs 12,000 crore that was cancelled earlier this month before end of September.
"Canceled bond auction to be adjusted towards the first half of the current fiscal," he said. The government is slated to borrow Rs 2.99 lakh crore in the first half of fiscal 2009-10.
On August 7, the government had rejected all the bids for its papers that would have enabled it to raise Rs 12,000 crore without assigning any reasons.
Bureau Report
First Published: Tuesday, August 18, 2009, 18:41