Rs 3.34 lakh crore: Subsidy bill for next fiscal

The country's subsidy bill will rise by 11.70% in the next fiscal with the interim budget pegging the figure at Rs 3.34 lakh crore based on a rise in food, fertiliser and oil subsidies.

According to budget documents, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal has said that the central subsidies will cost the exchequer Rs 3.34 lakh crore, up from the revised estimates of Rs 2.99 lakh crore in 2018-19.

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If one takes the budget estimates of Rs 2.95 lakh crore announced last February, the increase is 13.10%. In 2017-18, the actual subsidies doled out by the Centre was Rs 2.24 lakh crore.

The highest allocation of Rs 1.84 lakh crore is for food subsidy, up from the revised estimates of Rs 1.71 lakh crore and budget estimates of Rs 1.69 lakh crore in 2018-19. If one compares the actual spending of around Rs one lakh crore in 2017-18, the increase is almost 84%.

The fertiliser subsidy will cost the exchequer Rs 74,986 crore. In the ongoing fiscal, the allocation was Rs 70079.85 crore but the revised estimates showed that the spending was lesser at Rs 70075.20 crore.

The allocation for oil subsidy has witnessed a sharp increase from Rs 24,833.18 crore (revised estimates) spent this fiscal to Rs 37,478 crore. In this case too, the spending was less than the budget allocation of Rs 24,932.80 crore.