The government’s total liabilities stood at Rs 116.21 lakh crore at the end of March 2021, up 6.36 percent from the previous quarter, according to official data released on Friday.
The total liabilities (including liabilities under the ‘Public Account’) of the government were Rs 109.26 lakh crore at end-December 2020.
“This represented a quarter-on-quarter increase of 6.36 percent in Q4, FY21,” said the Public Debt Management report for the January-March 2021 quarter, released by the finance ministry.
Public debt accounted for 88.10 percent of total outstanding liabilities at end-March 2021.
Nearly 29.33 percent of the outstanding dated securities had a residual maturity of less than 5 years. The ownership pattern shows the share of commercial banks at 37.8 percent and 25.3 percent for insurance companies.
“The yields on government securities hardened in the secondary market due to increase in supply of G-secs during the quarter.
“Further, hardening of yields was more on the short end of curve due to increase in weekly borrowing and also announcement of resumption of normal liquidity operations by the Reserve Bank,” the report said.
However, the yields were supported by decision of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting held on February 5, 2021, wherein it kept the policy repo rate unchanged at 4 percent and reiterated to continue with the accommodative stance.
During January-March quarter of 2020-21, the central government issued dated securities worth Rs 3,20,349 crore as against Rs 76,000 crore in the year-ago period, while repayments were at Rs 29,145 crore.
The Reserve Bank conducted nine special and normal open market operations (OMOs) involving simultaneous purchase and sale of government securities during the quarter.
As per the ownership pattern of securities, the share of commercial banks stood at 37.77 percent, slightly lower than 37.8 percent at end-December 2020. Share of insurance companies and provident funds at end-March 2021 stood at 25.3 percent and 4.44 percent, respectively.
Share of mutual funds increased from 2.6 percent at end-December 2020 to 2.94 percent at end-March 2021. Share of RBI went up to 16.2 percent from 15.7 percent at end-December 2020.