India Budgets 7% Bigger Dividend Via Central Bank, State Firms

(Bloomberg) -- India's government is expecting a roughly 7% bigger dividend payment in the coming fiscal year from the central bank and state-run firms, according to budget documents released Monday.

For the year starting April 1, the government expects to earn nearly 1.04 trillion rupees ($14.2 billion) in dividends and profits from the Reserve Bank of India and state-run banks and companies, according to the budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. That's higher than the revised 965.4 billion rupees the government estimates for the current year, which came in well below the 1.55 trillion expected before the pandemic.

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The dividend for the coming fiscal is split between about 535 billion rupees from the RBI and state-run banks, with the remaining 500 billion from public sector enterprises.

The RBI which pays dividends annually to the government, allocated 571.3 billion rupees at the end of its financial year, which concluded in June 2020. Last year, the central bank decided to change its accounting year to bring it in sync with the government's, which runs from April to March. As a result, the central bank's accounting year will be for a nine-month period ending on March 31, 2021.

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