This MCQ module is based on: Government Expenditure & Three Deficits
Government Expenditure & Three Deficits
This assessment will be based on: Government Expenditure & Three Deficits
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Government Expenditure & The Three Deficits (Revenue, Fiscal, Primary)
Part 1 examined the receipts side of the budget. We now turn to the spending side. The same question is asked again — does the rupee leaving the treasury today create a long-lived asset or simply pay this year's bills? — and the answer once again splits expenditure into Revenue and Capital. Once both sides are on the table, the gap between them gives us the three diagnostic measures of fiscal health that headline every Union Budget speech: the Revenue Deficit, the Fiscal Deficit and the Primary Deficit.
5.7 Classification of Government Expenditure
Government Expenditure is divided in the Budget on the basis of one simple economic question: does the spending create an asset or reduce a liability? If it does, it is Capital Expenditure. If it merely keeps the wheels of the state turning for one more year, it is Revenue Expenditure.
5.7.1 Revenue Expenditure — Running the Government
Revenue Expenditure? is expenditure incurred for purposes other than the creation of physical or financial assets of the central government. It pays for the day-to-day functioning of departments and services. NCERT lists the major heads:
To this list NCERT adds grants given to state governments and other parties. Some of these grants do finance asset-creation by the recipient — for example a Centre-to-State grant for building a hospital — but from the Centre's books they are recorded as revenue expenditure because they do not create an asset for the Centre. (The hospital becomes an asset of the State, not the Union.) This is one of the small accounting subtleties that often appears in CBSE traps.
5.7.2 Capital Expenditure — Building for the Future
Capital Expenditure? includes all government spending that creates physical or financial assets or reduces financial liabilities. The textbook list:
- Acquisition of land, buildings and machinery — for example a new metro line, a new central university campus, an aircraft carrier.
- Investment in shares — equity infusion by the Centre into a PSU such as Air India Asset Holding Limited or a public sector bank's recapitalisation.
- Loans and advances by the Centre to state governments, Union Territories, PSUs and other parties — these create a financial asset (a loan receivable).
- Repayment of debt — when the government redeems a maturing bond, it reduces a financial liability, hence the outflow is capital expenditure.
Capital Expenditure = creates an asset OR reduces a liability — non-recurring, productive outflow.
Apply the test mechanically; the answer always falls out.
5.7.3 Plan vs Non-Plan — A Discontinued Distinction
Until 2017-18, both revenue and capital expenditure were further classified as plan (linked to the Five-Year Plans and Centre-to-State plan assistance) and non-plan (everything else — interest, defence, subsidies, salaries, pensions). The classification was criticised for fostering the misperception that "non-plan" was inherently wasteful and "plan" inherently desirable, leading to neglect of routine maintenance of existing schemes. Following the dissolution of the Planning Commission and creation of NITI Aayog, the Government of India abolished the plan/non-plan distinction in the 2017-18 budget. Today, expenditure is classified by function — defence, education, health, agriculture, etc. — rather than by plan/non-plan. NCERT retains the historical exposition; you must know that the distinction existed but was discontinued.
Composition of Centre's expenditure (% of GDP, 2024-25 P.A.). Revenue spending (11.8 %) dominates capital spending (3.2 %) — a structural feature of the Indian fiscal landscape that the FRBM Act tries to correct. Source: Economic Survey 2024-25, Statistical Appendix.
Classify each item as revenue expenditure or capital expenditure of the central government. Justify each.
- Salary paid to a Group A officer of the IAS
- Construction of the new Parliament building
- Interest paid on a 30-year G-Sec issued in 1995
- Loan extended to the State of Andhra Pradesh for the Polavaram irrigation project
- LPG subsidy under PMUY (Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana)
- Equity recapitalisation of a public sector bank by ₹20,000 crore
- Repayment of the principal of a maturing market loan
5.8 Balanced, Surplus & Deficit Budgets — The Definitions
If the government spends an amount exactly equal to the revenue it collects, the budget is balanced. If revenue exceeds the required expenditure, the budget is in surplus. The most common situation in modern fiscal practice — and certainly in India for almost every year since the 1970s — is that expenditure exceeds revenue. This shortfall is a budget deficit.
5.9 The Three Measures of Government Deficit
NCERT (Section 5.2.1) introduces three different deficit concepts: the Revenue Deficit, the Fiscal Deficit and the Primary Deficit. They are linked by simple subtraction, but each one diagnoses a different problem.
The Three Deficits — A Hierarchical View
Bloom: L2 Understand5.9.1 Revenue Deficit
The revenue deficit? is the excess of the government's revenue expenditure over its revenue receipts.
Revenue Deficit = Revenue Expenditure − Revenue ReceiptsEquivalently:
RD = RE − RR. Item 3 of NCERT Table 5.1 puts the 2024-25 (P.A.) value at 2.6 % of GDP — that is, 11.8 − 9.2 = 2.6.
Revenue deficit looks at the day-to-day account only. It includes only those transactions that affect the current income and expenditure of the government — no asset creation, no asset reduction. When a government runs a revenue deficit, it means the routine income from taxes and dividends is not enough even to pay for the routine running costs of the state. To put it bluntly, the government is dis-saving — using up the savings of households, firms and the rest of the world to finance a part of its consumption expenditure.
• builds up the stock of debt and the future interest bill, eventually forcing expenditure cuts;
• since most revenue expenditure is "committed" (interest, salaries, pensions, defence), the cuts often fall on productive capital expenditure or welfare programmes — leading to lower future growth and adverse welfare outcomes.
This is why FRBM Act 2003 originally targeted elimination of the revenue deficit by 2008–09 (revised to 2009–10).
5.9.2 Fiscal Deficit — The Headline Number
The fiscal deficit? is the difference between the government's total expenditure and its total receipts excluding borrowing. It is the most commonly quoted measure of fiscal stress and is the variable that ratings agencies, the IMF and bond markets actually watch.
Fiscal Deficit = Total Expenditure − (Revenue Receipts + Non-debt-creating Capital Receipts)Equivalently, since the rest must be borrowed:
Fiscal Deficit = Net Borrowing at home + Borrowing from RBI + Borrowing from abroadIn one phrase: Fiscal Deficit = Government's Total Borrowing Requirement.
NCERT Table 5.1 illustrates the calculation neatly. Total expenditure = Revenue Expenditure (11.8 %) + Capital Expenditure (3.2 %) = 15.0 % of GDP. Non-debt-creating receipts = Revenue Receipts (9.2 %) + Recovery of loans (0.1 %) + Other receipts (0.1 %) = 9.4 % of GDP. Therefore Fiscal Deficit = 15.0 − 9.4 = 5.6 % of GDP — exactly the borrowings figure shown in row 4(c). The two ways of measuring fiscal deficit must agree, by definition.
Fiscal Deficit = Revenue Deficit + (Capital Expenditure − Non-debt-creating Capital Receipts).
In 2024-25 (P.A.) this becomes 2.6 + (3.2 − 0.2) = 2.6 + 3.0 = 5.6 % of GDP.
It tells you how much of the borrowing is going into ordinary running expenses (the 2.6 %) vs how much is going into productive capital formation (the 3.0 %). A high revenue deficit as a share of fiscal deficit means a large part of the borrowing is being used to meet consumption needs rather than investment — a deterioration in the quality of the deficit.
5.9.3 Primary Deficit — Stripping Out the Past
Suppose the central government has accumulated a huge stock of debt over decades. Even if today's spending decisions are perfectly prudent, it must still pay interest on yesterday's loans — and that interest itself becomes part of revenue expenditure. To see how much of current expenditure is out of line with current revenue, we strip the interest bill out. The result is the primary deficit.
Primary Deficit = Fiscal Deficit − Net Interest Liabilitieswhere net interest liabilities = interest payments minus interest receipts of the government.
In NCERT Table 5.1: Primary Deficit (2024-25 P.A.) = Fiscal Deficit (5.6) − Interest Payments (3.6) = 2.0 % of GDP.
The primary deficit? isolates the borrowing requirement that is created by present-day fiscal imbalances, ignoring the unavoidable cost of servicing past debt. If the primary deficit is zero or negative, then today's government is financing all current expenditure out of current revenue — the country is no longer adding to its real fiscal burden, even if interest payments continue to accumulate debt mechanically.
Using the figures (% of GDP) from NCERT Table 5.1 reproduced below, compute the three deficits step by step.
| Item | % of GDP |
|---|---|
| 1. Revenue Receipts | 9.2 |
| 2. Revenue Expenditure | 11.8 |
| 2(a). Of which interest payments | 3.6 |
| 4. Capital Receipts (a + b + c) | 5.8 |
| 4(a). Recovery of loans | 0.1 |
| 4(b). Other receipts (PSU disinvestment) | 0.1 |
| 4(c). Borrowings & other liabilities | 5.6 |
| 5. Capital Expenditure | 3.2 |
Step 2. Non-debt-creating receipts = Revenue Receipts + Recovery of loans + Other receipts = 9.2 + 0.1 + 0.1 = 9.4 % of GDP.
Step 3. Revenue Deficit = RE − RR = 11.8 − 9.2 = 2.6 % of GDP.
Step 4. Fiscal Deficit = Total Expenditure − Non-debt-creating receipts = 15.0 − 9.4 = 5.6 % of GDP. (Crosscheck: this equals the borrowings figure 4(c).)
Step 5. Primary Deficit = Fiscal Deficit − Interest Payments = 5.6 − 3.6 = 2.0 % of GDP.
Interpretation: of the 5.6 % borrowing, 3.6 % goes only to service old interest, and 2.0 % is fresh (primary) imbalance — a far healthier picture than ten years ago when primary deficit was above 4 % of GDP.
5.10 India's Deficit Trends — 2010 to 2024
The fiscal deficit is not a static number — it moves with the business cycle, with reforms, and with shocks. The chart below shows its trajectory over the past decade-and-a-half.
Central government's gross fiscal deficit as % of GDP, 2010-11 to 2024-25 P.A. The 9.2 % spike in 2020-21 reflects the COVID-19 stimulus (free foodgrain under PMGKAY, Atmanirbhar Bharat packages, MGNREGA expansion). Subsequent budgets target a glide-path back to ~4.5 % by 2025-26. Source: Economic Survey, Receipts Budget 2024-25.
• 2014–19: Glide-path under FRBM amendments brought fiscal deficit down to 3.4 % by 2018–19.
• 2020–21: The COVID shock pushed it to 9.2 %, the highest since the 1991 crisis. The escape clause in the FRBM Act was invoked.
• 2024–25 (P.A.): 5.6 % of GDP, on a downward glide-path toward 4.5 % targeted for 2025-26.
5.11 Implications of a High Fiscal Deficit
Why does the headline fiscal-deficit number matter so much? NCERT (Section 5.2.1 and the "Other Perspectives on Deficits and Debt" sub-section) flags several routes through which a persistently high deficit becomes harmful.
5.12 Looking Ahead — Multipliers, Fiscal Policy & Exercises
We have now mapped the budget completely — both sides of the receipts/expenditure account, and the three deficits that summarise the gap. Part 3 closes the chapter with the most powerful idea in fiscal economics: the multiplier. Following NCERT Box 5.1, we will derive the government expenditure multiplier (∆Y/∆G = 1/(1−c)), the tax multiplier (∆Y/∆T = −c/(1−c)) and the famous balanced-budget multiplier (= 1). Then we tie everything together with the FRBM Act 2003, recent budget innovations (DBT, Atmanirbhar Bharat, PLI) and the full set of NCERT exercises with model answers.
Competency-Based Questions — Part 2
(A) Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
(B) Both A and R are true, but R is NOT the correct explanation of A.
(C) A is true, but R is false.
(D) A is false, but R is true.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is government expenditure classified in NCERT Class 12?
NCERT Class 12 classifies government expenditure in two main ways. By account, expenditure is either revenue expenditure (recurring spending that does not create assets, such as salaries, subsidies and interest payments) or capital expenditure (asset-creating spending such as infrastructure, roads, schools and equipment). By plan status, expenditure was historically split into plan and non-plan, though this distinction was abolished in the Union Budget 2017–18 in favour of revenue–capital and developmental–non-developmental classifications.
What is the difference between a balanced, surplus and deficit budget?
A balanced budget is one where total receipts equal total expenditure. A surplus budget is one where total receipts exceed total expenditure — the government collects more than it spends and reduces public debt. A deficit budget is one where total expenditure exceeds total receipts — the government spends more than it earns and must borrow to cover the gap. NCERT Class 12 notes that, in practice, India has run a deficit budget every year since the 1970s.
What is the revenue deficit in NCERT Class 12 Macroeconomics?
The revenue deficit is the excess of revenue expenditure over revenue receipts. It signals that the government's day-to-day account is in the red — it is borrowing or running down assets to pay for routine expenses such as salaries, pensions, subsidies and interest. A high revenue deficit is considered bad because the borrowing finances consumption spending rather than asset creation. The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, 2003 originally targeted the elimination of the revenue deficit.
What is the fiscal deficit and why does it matter?
The fiscal deficit is total expenditure minus total receipts other than borrowings. It measures the total amount the government must borrow during the year to meet its spending. A high fiscal deficit means a heavy borrowing need, which raises public debt, may crowd out private investment and pushes up interest rates. NCERT Class 12 notes that under the FRBM Act, India targets a fiscal deficit of about 3 percent of GDP, though actual deficits have hovered between 4.5 and 9 percent of GDP in recent years.
What is the primary deficit and how is it calculated?
The primary deficit equals the fiscal deficit minus interest payments. It strips out the cost of servicing past debt and shows the deficit that would have existed if the government had no inherited debt burden. A primary deficit reveals whether the government is creating fresh new debt over and above what is needed to pay interest on existing debt. A small or negative primary deficit (primary surplus) is a sign that future debt-to-GDP will eventually stabilise or fall.
How has India's fiscal deficit trended from 2010 to 2024?
India's central-government fiscal deficit hovered around 4 to 5 percent of GDP in the first half of the 2010s, dipped to roughly 3.4 percent in 2018–19, then rose sharply to about 9.2 percent in 2020–21 due to the COVID-19 emergency response. It has since narrowed again to about 5.6 percent in 2023–24 and is targeted at 4.4 percent in 2025–26 under the revised FRBM glide path. NCERT Class 12 uses these data points to illustrate how big external shocks force temporary deviations from FRBM targets.