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Monday, November 5, 2012

Indian government public debt-some interesting facts

The Finance Ministry publishes a quarterly report on public debt management(read the latest one at http://www.finmin.nic.in/reports/PDM_july_sept_2012.pdf). Unlike the usual dry government reports, this one is full of graphs and analysis rather than just reporting.  The first table below shows that around 90% of our debt is internally owed, so the fears of foreigners selling down their public debt(as is the case in China-USA relationships) is not existing here.
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The interesting insight in the above tables is that RBI has reduced its ownership of the public debt, which is now passed on to the commercial banks! Wonder how that was done without SLR hikes!

And lastly, though not copied here, the debt maturity profile is pretty well staggered with just 30% of debt due within 1-5years and another 36% due in 6-10 years. Certainly, this report is worth tracking and referring to when there are concerns about debt default.