The pick-up was largely witnessed in manufacturing and mining, even as agriculture and service sectors lagged. Also, with New Delhi’s full-year fiscal deficit estimates already touching 96 per cent at the end of October, there appears to be limited headroom for a government-led stimulus. The fiscal deficit stood at Rs 5.25 lakh crore during April-October, according to official data released on Thursday. For 2017-18, the government aims to bring down the fiscal deficit to 3.2 per cent of GDP.“We see the risk of combined fiscal deficit widening to 6.5 per cent of GDP in FY18, compared with the government's budget estimate of 5.8 per cent of GDP. We believe the central government will likely breach its FY18 target of 3.2 per cent of GDP by about 30bps, mostly due to lower revenue collection rather than higher expenditure,” said Tanvee Gupta Jain, economist, UBS.

Source: Economic Times December 02, 2017 05:15 UTC