The Maharashtra government's spiraling debt has often found itself in the political and public discourse. However, the state's debt requirements have been lesser than expected for the current fiscal.

"As per the budget estimates presented in March 2018, the total debt of the State was expected to be Rs 4,61,807 crore. Accordingly, during 2018-19, loan of Rs 54,996 crore was to be taken. Due to the conscious efforts taken this year, raising of loan has been restricted to Rs 11,990 crore. Therefore, the amount of total debt of the State has increased to Rs 4,14,411 crore," said finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar in his budget speech on Wednesday.

A senior official from the state finance department added that they did not need to raise additional debt due to belt-tightening measures. "Earlier, we had budgeted over Rs 10,000 crore for the disbursement of seventh pay commission dues in this financial year itself. We did not have to utilise the full amount this year (hike applied from January 1). Hence, we did not require loans for that purpose. We cut down on unnecessary expenditure on various heads and utilised cash balances to restrict our loan requirements and consequently, interest costs," he added.

However, the implementation of the pay commission, will push up the salary burden to Rs 1,15,241 crore in 2019-20, from the revised estimates of Rs 88,630 crore in 2018-19.

This will also limit debt servicing costs to just 11.1 per cent of receipts compared to the estimates of 13%. It had risen to 16-17 per cent in previous years. In 2019-20, interest payments have been estimated to be 6,65,061 crore, up from the previous financial year's revised estimates of Rs 5,87,570 crore.

The official said they expected to take loans of Rs 56,000 to 60,000 crore in 2019-20, which may lead to the debt stock rising to Rs 4,70,000 crore.

In his budget speech, Mungantiwar said considering the size of the state's economy, "it can be seen that this debt is reasonable as per the established fiscal benchmarks."

"The debt of the State is estimated to be 14.82 per cent of its gross state domestic products (GSDP) as per the revised estimates. According to the prevailing fiscal indicators, the financial position of the state is considered as healthy if the quantum of debt is below 25 per cent of GSDP. This Government has been successful in keeping the quantum of debt below 15 per cent of GSDP for the year 2018-2019," he added.

A senior official from the finance department said of the around Rs 1,39,000 crore estimate for state goods and service tax (GST) and value added tax (VAT) collections by March-end, they had collected around Rs 1,20,000 crore by January-end. "We expect to meet the target, with the collections deviating in a range of around Rs 1,000 crore either way," he explained.

Maharashtra levies VAT on petroleum products and liquor, which are not covered under GST. State GST collections are the largest source of tax revenues for the state.