Govt's total liabilities rise to Rs 116.21 lakh crore at end-March 2021

The government's total liabilities stood at Rs 116.21 lakh crore at the end of March 2021, up 6.36 per cent from the previous quarter, according to official data released on Friday.

The total liabilities (including liabilities under the 'Public Account') of the government were Rs 109.26 lakh crore at end-December 2020.

"This represented a quarter-on-quarter increase of 6.36 per cent in Q4, FY21," said the Public Debt Management report for the January-March 2021 quarter, released by the finance ministry.

Public debt accounted for 88.10 per cent of total outstanding liabilities at end-March 2021.

Nearly 29.33 per cent of the outstanding dated securities had a residual maturity of less than 5 years. The ownership pattern shows the share of commercial banks at 37.8 per cent and 25.3 per cent for insurance companies.

"The yields on Government securities hardened in the secondary market due to increase in supply of G-secs during the quarter.

"Further, hardening of yields was more on the short end of curve due to increase in weekly borrowing and also announcement of resumption of normal liquidity operations by the Reserve Bank," the report said.

However, the yields were supported by decision of the RBI's Monetary Policy Committee meeting held on February 5, 2021, wherein it kept the policy repo rate unchanged at 4 per cent and reiterated to continue with the accommodative stance.

During January-March quarter of 2020-21, the central government issued dated securities worth Rs 3,20,349 crore as against Rs 76,000 crore in the year-ago period, while repayments were at Rs 29,145 crore.

The Reserve Bank conducted nine special and normal open market operations (OMOs) involving simultaneous purchase and sale of government securities during the quarter.

As per the ownership pattern of securities, the share of commercial banks stood at 37.77 per cent, slightly lower than 37.8 per cent at end-December 2020. Share of insurance companies and provident funds at end-March 2021 stood at 25.3 per cent and 4.44 per cent, respectively.

Share of mutual funds increased from 2.6 per cent at end-December 2020 to 2.94 per cent at end-March 2021. Share of RBI went up to 16.2 per cent from 15.7 per cent at end-December 2020.