The government's subsidies on food, fertilizers and petroleum are estimated to decline by 39% to ₹4,33,108 crore this fiscal and fall further by 27% to nearly ₹3.18 lakh crore in 2022-23.
In its Revised Budget estimate for the 2021-22 fiscal, the government has pegged total subsidies at ₹4,33,108 crore against the actual Budget Estimate of ₹7,07,707 crore in the previous financial year. Out of this, the food subsidy is estimated to decline to ₹2,86,469 crore in the current fiscal from ₹5,41,330 crore in 2020-21, while petroleum subsidy is estimated to fall to ₹6,517 crore from ₹38,455 crore in the said period.
However, fertilizer subsidy is estimated to increase to ₹1,40,122 crore during the ongoing fiscal from ₹1,27,922 crore in the previous fiscal.
During the current fiscal, the Centre has hiked the subsidy for non-urea fertilizers several times due to a sharp rise in global prices. The move was aimed at ensuring that farmers continue to get di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) and other nutrients under the nutrient-based subsidy (NBS) policy at a reasonable rate.
For the next fiscal, the government said total subsidies were estimated to decline further to ₹3,17,866 crore.
