New Delhi, Oct 1 (IANS): India's budgetary fiscal deficit for the April-August 2019-20 period came in at 78.7 per cent, or Rs 5.538 lakh crore, of the budget estimates (BE), official data showed on Monday.

The government has targeted the fiscal deficit to be at Rs 7.03 lakh crore for 2019-20.

According to the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) data, the fiscal deficit during the corresponding months of the previous fiscal was 94.7 per cent of that year's target.

The Central government's total expenditure stood at Rs 11.75 lakh crore (42.2 per cent of the budget estimates) and total receipts were Rs 6.21 lakh crore (26.4 per cent of the budget estimates).

Besides, the total expenditure for the period under review comprised of Rs 10.39 lakh crore on the revenue account, while Rs 1.36 lakh crore was on capital expenditure.

Total receipts comprised Rs 6.03 lakh crore of net tax revenue and Rs 18,260 crore of non-tax revenue receipts.

"Benefitting from the transfer of funds from the RBI, which have helped to shore up non tax revenues, the Government of India's fiscal deficit declined by 6.3 per cent on a YoY basis to Rs 5.5 trillion in April-August 2019 from Rs 5.9 trillion in the same months of FY2018," said ICRA's Principal Economist Aditi Nayar.

"However, the pace of net tax revenue growth slowed considerably to 10.5 per cent at end August 2019 from 15.8 per cent at the end of July 2019, which appears to have partly been led by the settlement of IGST balances."