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

The centre’s capital expenditure in the primary 11 months of the fiscal got here in at nearly 80% of the full year with the tempo of spending easing in February in contrast to the earlier month.

As per official knowledge launched by the Controller Normal 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 target 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 may imply that the Centre would have issue assembly its full fiscal target for capex this fiscal. The RE was scaled again from the unique target of Rs 11.1 lakh crore due to decrease spending on account of the final 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 in the primary 11 months of the fiscal.

Aditi Nayar, Chief Economist & Head – Analysis & Outreach, ICRA famous that the Centre’s capex wants to increase by about 44% YoY to contact Rs 2.1 lakh crore in March 2025 to meet the FY2025 revised estimate, which seems to be a tall ask. “Consequently, we anticipate modest undershooting in capex relative to the target of Rs. 10.2 lakh crore as per the FY2025 RE. Nevertheless, this may offset the miss on the disinvestment entrance, in addition to any overshooting in the revex,” she mentioned.

The Centre’s fiscal deficit remained in test at Rs 13.46 lakh crore or 85.8% of the full year target, 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 in line with absolutely the FY2025 RE of Rs. 15.7 lakh crore. “Curiously, 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% greater the First Advance Estimate (FAE) of Rs. 324.1 trillion that was used in the Union Price range,” she mentioned, including that this means that the fiscal deficit can be contained at 4.7% of GDP in FY2025, decrease than the RE of 4.8% for the fiscal.