Accordingly, senior government official have said that around Rs 90,000 crore is expected to come from the apex bank in this fiscal. Besides, the Budget documents showed that dividends from RBI, public sector lenders and financial institutions have been pegged at over Rs 1,06,041 crore.
According to the full Budget 2019-20 documents, the "dividend or surplus of Reserve Bank of India, nationalised banks and financial institutions" has been pegged at Rs 1,06,041.56 crore from Rs 74,140.37 crore in the revised estimates for 2018-19.
In 2019-20, the dividends from public sector enterprises and other investments has been pegged at Rs 57,486.88 crore from Rs 45,124.18 crore in the revised estimates for 2018-19.
The total dividend profits has been pegged at Rs 1,63,528.44 crore from Rs 1,19,264.55 crore. Besides, the government is heavily dependent upon the dividend payout from the RBI which has been estimated at Rs 90,000 crore from Rs 68,000 crore which was reported for the previous fiscal.
Besides, a panel led by former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan was set-up late last year to decide the appropriate capital reserves the apex bank should maintain. Sources have said pointed out that the panel is likely to recommend modest amount of surplus transfer to the Centre.
It is likely to suggest about sub-1 lakh crores of transfers from the RBI kitty to Finance Ministry with the usage limited not to control fiscal deficit or spend on social sector schemes but to retire debt.
The Centre expects this amount should be at least one-third at Rs 3.6 lakh crore as the RBI has over Rs 9.6 lakh crore surplus capital with it. The Finance Ministry believes that the buffer of 28 per cent of gross assets maintained by the central bank is well above the global norm of around 14 per cent.
In the past, the issue of the ideal level of RBI reserves had been examined by three committees one headed by V Subrahmanyam in 1997, by Usha Thorat in 2004 and by Y.H. Malegam in 2013.
( With inputs from IANS )