March 15: The government’s budget deficit as of eight months of the current fiscal year 2022/23 has surpassed Rs 156.44 billion, according to the details unveiled by the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO).    
The government has spent Rs 779.23 billion of its budget as of mid-March this year while revenue collection has remained at Rs 622.78 billion.    
According to the revenue collection and budget expenditure details, expenditure appears to be more than the income of the government, thereby resulting in deficit.    
The statistics show that the government has been able to achieve only 42.7 per cent of its annual revenue collection target while only 43.44 percent of budget expenditure target has been met so far.    
The government had introduced an annual budget of Rs 1793 billion for the fiscal year 2022/23.    
Due to falling dismally short of the annual target, the government considered reducing the size of the budget by 14 percent and maintained it at Rs 1549 billion through half-yearly review.    
The current expenditure of the government in this period stands at 51.46 per cent, capital expenditure is 22.15 per cent and the expenditure towards fiscal management is 37.41 per cent. The expenditure under the current expenditure heading so far is equivalent to Rs 608.84 billion out of the annual allocation of Rs 1183.23 billion under this heading.    
Likewise, 22.15 per cent of the total annual allocation has been spent under the capital expenditure heading. The total annual allocation for this heading is Rs 380.38 billion and the expenditure so far is Rs 84.25 billion.    
Annual budget of Rs 230.21 billion has been allocated towards the financial management heading and the expenditure until March 14 is Rs 86.12 billion.    
According to the data provided by the Financial Comptroller General Office, the expenditure towards financial management is more than that of the capital expenditure during the eight months period.    
The government’s revenue collection until March 14 is only equivalent to 42.7 per cent of the annual revenue collection target. The government had set the target of raising Rs 1458.60 billion in the current fiscal year. So far, only Rs 622.78 billion revenue has been collected.    
Of this, internal revenue collection is 41.53 per cent or Rs 582.77 billion. The government has the target of accepting foreign assistance of Rs 55.45 billion this year and it has so far received 8.66 per cent of this amount or Rs 4.80 billion. -- RSS