Cooking the Nation's books - Part II

Carrying on from where I so abruptly sliced the ‘Cooking the Nations Books’ post into two… I ended up downloading the whole sheaf of financial statements from the Finance Ministry site and started my elevator ride down the black hole of numbers in tens and hundreds of millions.

We shall, for the purpose of this post, not worry about whether the figures are in Crores (10 Million) or Lacs (Hundred Thousand) but the pure arithmetic gymnastics of the mandarins of the Finance Ministry. Almost all receipts and disbursements are maintained in a book termed as the ‘Consolidated Fund of India’, which also details the receipts and disbursements under the ‘Capital Account’. A second book of accounts titled ‘Public Account of India’ deals with funds against which the government either earns interest or disburses monies. This book is not what we are concerned with.

The first thing that struck me was the callousness with which the books have been prepared. The guys tasked with making the Financial Statements did not even check to make sure that all additions are in place and I found multiple instances of totalling mistakes. I feverishly hope that the guys noted the figures correctly and that a 69 didn’t get transformed to 96.

Here’s how the figures stack up….

Earnings/Receipts:

Taxes (all taxes under the sun) fetches the government Rs. 687,679.00 crores. Of the monies earned Rs. 178,765.00 crores is shared between the various states leaving the federal government with Rs. 508,914.00 crores (A) to play with. Non Tax Revenues fetches the government Rs. 224,519.55 crores (B) and a further Rs. 55,183.89 crores (C) is shown as receipts under Revenue deficits (by what logic I fail to fathom). Add to this Rs. 1,901,142.94 (D) which is shown under receipts from the Capital Account. Here is the interesting part - Rs. 1,884,985.43 crores is money raised as public debt, which in turn constitutes 99.15% of all receipts under the Capital Account.

Going forward if we add up A+B+C+D, the governments earnings stands at Rs. 2,689,760.38 of which the government raises 70.08% as debt and do you recall any of the economists or corporate honchos ever raising the red flag and taking the government to task!

The disbursements/spendings of the government provides a much bleaker picture. Read on….

Disbursements/Spending:

Disbursements shown under the Revenue Account stands at Rs. 785,583.70 crores (A), all Capital Expenditure heads add up to Rs. 1,839,833.97 crores (B) and a host of other expenses are charged simply by saying ‘Disbursements Charged on the consolidated Funds of India’ which adds up to a staggering Rs. 1,994,729.44 crores (C). Add A + B + C and the government ends up spending Rs. 4,620,147.11 crores, spending almost double of what it earns. The shocking part here is not that we end up spending more than we earn, but 72.31% of all earnings are spent towards debt servicing. No wonder we have precious little left for education, infrastructure development etc etc and to top it all none of the myriad hued analysts, who go though the budget using a fine tooth comb, have though it fit to share the information with the public.

Not only does the shortfall between earnings and expenses stands at a shocking Rs. 1,930,386.73 crores, but our honoured Finance Minister has not included the Rs. 60,000 crores of the farmer largess nor has he added the financial implications of the sixth pay commission in the budget. As per the latest news that’s emerging, the government will end up forking out Rs. 30,000 crores to meet the revised increased salaries, shooting up the already high deficit to Rs. 2,020,386.73 crores.

This kind of financial jugglery has been done by almost all governments since the late 70’s sinking the federal government’s finances further and further into debt which, as we stand today, is an extremely vicious circle and an extremely tight spot to get out of until some drastic measures are taken to enforce fiscal discipline in the system.