Under the cash management guidelines, 55 central Ministries/Departments are expected to spend 25 per cent of their budget allocation during each of 3 quarters, while during the fourth quarter there is capping of 33 per cent on expenditure with 15 per cent alone in March.
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VELANKANNI RAJ B
Amid growing concerns that escalating tensions in West Asia could disrupt crude-linked costs and strain India’s fiscal arithmetic, the Finance Ministry has signalled confidence in its budget management, stating that most of the FY26 fiscal indicators have been achieved.
Officials indicated that FY27 expenditure rollout has commenced as scheduled, suggesting that ministries are proceeding without any immediate recalibration of spending plans. While fiscal stability remains intact for now, officials noted that the government maintains the flexibility to review key allocations — especially fertilizer and oil subsidies — at a later stage, should global commodity price volatility necessitate a response. Subsidy outgo linked to imported inputs could emerge as a key pressure point if geopolitical volatility persists.
“Initial numbers suggest that most of the fiscal indicators for FY26 have been met,” a senior government official said.
Adding to this, another official said that direct tax numbers are being reconciled and figures will be made public soon. Earlier, officials had said that official said that revenues from customs duty came in at 102 per cent of RE, while it was 101 per cent of RE for excise duty. The Central GST collection came in at 100.8 per cent of RE for FY26.
Complete official data of all the fiscal indicators – revenue, expenditure and fiscal deficit — will be out by the end of next month.
Expenditure in FY27
Meanwhile, the first official noted that FY27 expenditure commenced as scheduled in April. “Individual ministries and departments are proceeding with the Monthly Expenditure Plans (MEP) and Quarterly Expenditure Plans as originally finalised,” the official stated.
Under the cash management guidelines, 55 central Ministries/Departments are expected to spend 25 per cent of their budget allocation during each of 3 quarters, while during the fourth quarter there is capping of 33 per cent on expenditure with 15 per cent alone in March.
“As of now, there is no change in the cash management guidelines,” the official said.
Expenditure Review
When asked about a potential review of fertilizer and fuel subsidies, the official noted that such a reassessment would only be considered after some time, once the impact of global volatility becomes clearer.
“No doubt urea prices in global market have gone up, but imported urea has a small share in overall supply. Also, effort is being made to provide more gas to fertilizer plants to ensure higher domestic production,” he said, while underlining that requirement of subsidy will be met. For the current fiscal, allocation for fertilizer subsidy has been pegged at around ₹1.71 lakh crore, while for fuel it is over ₹12,000 crore.
There are also indications that three oil marketing companies — Indian Oil, HPCL and BPCL — are likely to get compensation for selling LPG below cost price. Last year they were given ₹30,000 crore as compensation, while in 2022, they were given ₹22,000 crore. However, this time amount could be much higher.
Published on April 27, 2026
