Govt's fiscal consolidation strategy negative for ratings: Fitch

The Union Budget for 2015-16 could have been more ambitions on the fiscal front, especially given a high public debt burden, and the government's less aspiring fiscal consolidation strategy is negative for the India's ratings, an analyst at Fitch Ratings said on Monday.'

"The medium-term fiscal consolidation strategy is less aspiring than in the past, which is negative from a sovereign rating perspective," Thomas Rookmaaker, director at Fitch's Asia-Pacific Sovereign Group wrote in an email.

"If disinvestment would be treated as a below the line financing item, as is international best practice, instead of a revenue item, the fiscal deficit would actually rise from 4.3 per cent in FY15 to 4.4 per cent in FY16," Rookmaaker added.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday presented his maiden full-year Budget for the coming financial year that put boosting growth before painful reforms, slowing the pace of fiscal deficit cuts and seeking to put domestic and foreign capital to work.

(Reuters)