Centre’s capex slows in February, April to February capex 80% of full year target

The centre’s capital expenditure within the first 11 months of the fiscal got here in at nearly 80% of the complete yr with the tempo of spending easing in February in comparison with the earlier month.

As per official information launched by the Controller Basic of Accounts on Friday, the Centre’s capital expenditure was Rs 8.11 lakh crore between April 2024 and February 2025, which amounted to 79.7% of the revised goal of Rs 10.18 lakh crore. It had spent an virtually comparable Rs 8.05 lakh crore as capital expenditure in the identical interval final fiscal.

Considerably, the capital expenditure in February was simply Rs 54,528 crore, which was the bottom since December 2024 when the Centre had spent Rs 1.71 lakh crore as capex. In January, the capex was Rs 72,022 crore.

Analysts level out that this might imply that the Centre would have issue assembly its full fiscal goal for capex this fiscal. The RE was scaled again from the unique goal of Rs 11.1 lakh crore attributable to decrease spending on account of the overall elections and an unusually lengthy monsoon.

Capital expenditure by key infra ministries of railways and roads amounted to 91% of the RE and 90% respectively within the first 11 months of the fiscal.

Aditi Nayar, Chief Economist & Head – Analysis & Outreach, ICRA famous that the Centre’s capex must develop by about 44% YoY to the touch Rs 2.1 lakh crore in March 2025 to fulfill the FY2025 revised estimate, which seems to be a tall ask. “Consequently, we count on modest undershooting in capex relative to the goal of Rs. 10.2 lakh crore as per the FY2025 RE. Nonetheless, this might offset the miss on the disinvestment entrance, in addition to any overshooting within the revex,” she mentioned.

The Centre’s fiscal deficit remained in verify at Rs 13.46 lakh crore or 85.8% of the complete yr goal, with expectations that it’d do at advert higher than the revised estimate of 4.8% of the GDP for the present fiscal.

Nayar mentioned ICRA expects the fiscal deficit to print largely consistent with absolutely the FY2025 RE of Rs. 15.7 lakh crore. “Apparently, the NSO has pegged the nominal GDP at Rs. 331.0 trillion as per its Second Advance Estimate (SAE) for FY2025, which is 2.1% larger the First Advance Estimate (FAE) of Rs. 324.1 trillion that was used within the Union Funds,” she mentioned, including that this suggests that the fiscal deficit will probably be contained at 4.7% of GDP in FY2025, decrease than the RE of 4.8% for the fiscal.