New Delhi: India’s external liabilities, the loans and other liabilities raised from international financial institutions and other countries, topped over $624 billion at the end of the last financial year that ended in March, showed the latest official data shared by the government in the Parliament on Tuesday.
In response to a question in the Lok Sabha, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the house that as per the provisional data maintained by the Reserve Bank of India, the external debt of the country was 624.65 billion US dollars. As per the information given by the government, external debt raised from multilateral bodies amounted to $74.84 billion, of which $63.45 billion was borrowed by the government while non-government borrowing has been estimated at $11.39 billion.
Similarly, in the case of bilateral external borrowing, the government accounted for the bulk of loans as it borrowed $27.57 billion out of total $34.57 billion borrowed under the bilateral foreign arrangements while non-government borrowing in this category of loans has been estimated at $7 billion. In addition to this, loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been estimated at $22.26 billion.
Also read-Tamil Nadu, UP record public debt of over Rs 7 lakh crore each: Data
The liability of payment of over $22.26 billion represents allocation of Special Drawing Rights by the IMF. “They are long term liabilities. They are included in the gross external debt position as per IMF’s Guide for External Debt Statistics for compilers and users,” said the finance minister.
However, a back of the hand calculation shows that these three foreign loans amount only to a small portion of the country’s total external outstanding liabilities at around $131.67 billion, which is little over just one fifth of the total external liabilities as nearly 80 percent external liabilities are classified under ‘other’ category.
The external liabilities under this category include export credit, commercial borrowings, NRI deposits, Rupee debt and short-term debt, among other things.
India’s foreign debt rose by 12% in 4 years- Sitharaman said India’s external debt outstanding includes special drawing rights (SDR) allocations, currency and deposits, debt securities, loans, trade credit and advances, other debt liabilities, and direct investment or intercompany lending.
Also read-India's debt ratio projected to be 84 per cent of its GDP: IMF
The data showed that India’s external debt liabilities rose by nearly 12 percent in the last four years, from $558.3 billion in March 2020 to $624.7 billion in March 2023 as per the Reserve Bank’s provisional data. As per the revised data, India’s external debt was $573.4 billion in 2021, and it was $619.1 billion in March 2022 as per the RBI’s partly revised data.
Interest of over $68 billion paid since 2020- The country has paid over $68.8 billion as interest against the external debt during the last four years. In 2020, interest payment liability against India’s external debt was $18.63 billion, but it declined marginally during the next two years as the country paid $15.41 billion in 2021 and $15.13 billion in 2022 as interest.
However, in the last financial year, interest payment against external debt rose to $19.66 billion.
Foreign loan remains range bound in 4 years- As per the data shared by the finance minister in Parliament, the loans raised by India’s from abroad have been range-bound, in the range of $190 billion to $200 billion. For example, India’s raised foreign loans worth $194.2 billion in 2020, it marginally declined to 191.9 billion in the next year as per the revised data.
As per the RBI’s partly revised data, the country’s foreign loans have been estimated at $197.5 billion in 2022 and as per the provisional data, it has crossed the figure of $200 billion in the last financial year when it has been estimated at $203.1 billion.
Also read-IMF projects Indian economy to grow at 6.1 per cent in 2023
