Thirty-Four Paise in Every Rupee

Blitz India Business

NEW DELHI: India’s public debt fell as a share of the economy for a second year, and the cost of servicing it fell too. In the same report sits ₹4.80 lakh crore of tax that nobody disputes is owed and nobody has collected.

Report No. 29 of 2026 of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, on compliance with the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003, for the year 2024-25, was presented in Parliament on 12 August 2026; the auditor’s press release is dated 13 August 2026. The review is mandatory under Rule 8 of the Act, which has been in force since July 2004. For an investor it is the single most useful fiscal document published all year, because it is the only one that reconciles the Budget against the accounts.

The ratio moved the right way

Central Government debt stood at 58.46 per cent of GDP at the end of FY 2024-25, having decreased over the last two years. The FRBM framework’s sunset target for that date was 40 per cent; recomputed, the gap is 18.46 percentage points, and the auditor records plainly that the target was not met.

But the mechanism underneath is the part a market reader should note. Debt rose in absolute terms by ₹14.24 lakh crore in FY 2024-25, 8.29 per cent over the year before — and the auditor’s own finding is that the pace of accumulation of Central Government debt between FY 2022-23 and FY 2024-25 was less than the expansion of GDP. The ratio fell not because borrowing stopped but because the denominator ran faster. That is the ordinary, and the only durable, way a debt ratio comes down.

The report attributes the rise mainly to ₹12.28 lakh crore of internal debt, ₹0.78 lakh crore in the current value of external debt and ₹0.24 lakh crore of public account liability. Blitz India added them: ₹13.30 lakh crore, or 93.4 per cent of the increase, leaving ₹0.94 lakh crore unitemised in the press brief. The auditor’s word is “mainly”, and it is precisely right.

Servicing cost, and the guarantee ceiling

Two more indicators improved. Debt sustainability, on the debt stabilization indicator, was positive for FY 2024-25. And the ratio of interest payments to revenue receipts — how much of what the government earns goes to servicing what it owes — was 35.35 per cent in FY 2022-23, rose to 35.72 per cent in FY 2023-24, and fell to 34.02 per cent in FY 2024-25. That is a 1.70 percentage point improvement from the peak, recomputed. Put in the language of a household: the government now spends about thirty-four paise of every rupee it earns on interest, against nearly thirty-six two years ago.

The framework also bars additional guarantees on the security of the Consolidated Fund of India above one-half per cent of GDP in any financial year. The auditor records that additional guarantees in FY 2024-25 remained within that limit — a contingent-liability check that matters more than it is usually given credit for.
What Report No. 29 of 2026 establishes

Source: Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, press release of 13 August 2026 on Report No. 29 of 2026, presented 12 August 2026. Component sum, percentage-point gaps, the deficit difference and all arrears ratios recomputed by Blitz India. Photograph note, Circular BIMG/CIR/2026/02. No copyright-clean photograph of this subject, taken on this date, could be verified from this session, and the circular bars an old picture, a stock image and a news-agency picture alike. Rather than ship an unverified filename, the desk carries this in-house Blitz data card at the exact point where the picture would run.

The number that should hold a treasurer’s attention

At the end of FY 2024-25, ₹38.40 lakh crore stood raised as taxes but not realised, on Statement D1. The figure rose by ₹7.29 lakh crore over the previous year — 23.43 per cent on the opening figure, recomputed. And of the total, ₹4.80 lakh crore was not under dispute.

Two ratios make the point. The undisputed portion is 12.5 per cent of all unrealised tax, and it is 65.84 per cent of the year’s entire increase. Nearly two-thirds of the growth in arrears in FY 2024-25 was money that nobody was arguing about. For a country whose debt ratio is coming down because the economy is growing rather than because the exchequer is collecting more, that is the most actionable figure in the report.

The reconciliation items

The report also records variations that a serious analyst has to know about. The D2 statement on arrears of interest carried figures at variance with the Union Government Finance Accounts. The financial assets disclosed in the D4 statement — loans to foreign governments and to states and union territories — varied within the Receipt Budget. And Budget Estimate figures used in the half-yearly statements H1 and H2, and in the Medium-Term Fiscal Policy Statement, differed from those in the Annual Financial Statement 2024-25.

Written from the auditor’s press release on the tabled report; the tabled volume, with the Ministry of Finance’s replies, was not reachable from this session. The paragraph numbers cited above are those the auditor prints in the release. Nothing is put as concluded against the Ministry and no individual is named.

One suggestion, on disclosure rather than policy. The most useful thing that could be published from this report is the composition of the ₹4.80 lakh crore that is not in dispute: an annual table splitting it by the age of the demand and by the reason recovery has not occurred. The Department of Revenue holds that breakdown. Publishing it would let Parliament, and the market, distinguish arrears that are recoverable from arrears that are merely on the books — and would put a realistic number against the receipts side of every future Budget.