Public debt rises 0.9% in Jan-March qtr

New Delhi:  The government’s total debt increased by 0.9 per cent in the fourth quarter ended March 31, over the previous thee-month period of the current financial year.  Internal debt constituted 92.1 per cent of public debt at end of March 2015, while marketable securities accounted for 84.8 per cent of public debt, a Finance Ministry official statement said. About 24.8 per cent of outstanding stock has a residual maturity of up to 5 years, which implies that over the next five years, on an average, around 5.0 per cent of outstanding stock needs to be rolled over every year, it said. During fourth quarter, the government issued dated securities worth Rs 95,000 crore to complete the borrowings of Rs 5.92 lakh crore projected in revised estimate. For the entire fiscal, the gross market borrowings were higher by 5 per cent at Rs 5.64 lakh crore than previous year’s gross market borrowings.