Given the current scenario, wherein the front loading of expenditure has resulted in 84.4 per cent of the budgeted fiscal deficit target being hit by November, Crisil said it expects the fiscal deficit to touch 5.2 per cent.
"The Centre can reduce its fiscal deficit by as much as Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) this fiscal by using cash reserves of public sector units," its research wing said in the note.
It said the top 20 public sector undertakings will have a cash reserve of Rs 1,60,000 crore (Rs 1,600 billion) by March 2014 and are ‘comfortably placed’ to pay a special dividend.
"We estimate these companies are well placed to distribute 40 per cent of the corpus (Rs 64,000 crore or Rs 640 billion)
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