What the government's accounts are

The largest single actor in the Indian economy publishes its accounts every month, about a month in arrears, free. Almost nobody opens them.

Two columns

A government's accounts have the same shape as anybody's: money coming in, money going out, and the difference.

Receipts are what the government takes in — taxes, dividends from the companies it owns, fees, interest on loans it has made, proceeds from selling assets.

Expenditure is what it pays out — salaries, pensions, subsidies, interest on its borrowing, roads, railways, defence equipment, transfers to states.

When expenditure exceeds receipts the government borrows the difference. Chapter 2 names the gap properly; chapter 6 covers who lends it.

The distinction that does the work

Inside both columns sits a split that matters more than the totals, and it is the one thing to understand before any figure means anything.

Revenue items are recurring. On the receipts side: taxes, which arrive every year. On the expenditure side: salaries, pensions, interest, subsidies — things consumed in the year they are paid.

Capital items change the balance sheet. On the receipts side: selling a stake in a company, or recovering a loan. On the expenditure side: building a road, buying equipment, lending to a state.

The test the government applies is whether the transaction creates an asset or extinguishes a liability. Paying a teacher's salary does neither. Building the school does.

Why this is the central distinction: borrowing to build is defensible in a way that borrowing to run is not. A road financed by debt produces decades of use against decades of repayment. A salary financed by debt produces one year of service against decades of repayment. The structure of a government's accounts is designed to let you see which is happening, and chapter 2's three deficits are the formal version of that question.

India's figures, at the top level

From the Controller General of Accounts, for April to September 2026 — the first half of financial year 2026-27, in ₹ crore:

	Budget Estimate 2026-27	Actual to September
Revenue receipts	35,33,150	17,56,820
Non-debt capital receipts	1,18,397	78,602
Total receipts	36,51,547	18,35,422
Revenue expenditure	41,25,494	18,95,288
Capital expenditure	12,21,821	6,54,547
Total expenditure	53,47,315	25,49,835

Check the two totals and they add exactly: 17,56,820 + 78,602 is 18,35,422, and 18,95,288 + 6,54,547 is 25,49,835. These are accounting statements, so the sub-totals tie to the rupee — the same property chapter 2 of the company analysis subject found in a balance sheet, for the same reason.

Note the phrase non-debt capital receipts. Money raised by borrowing is also a receipt in the cash sense, and it is deliberately excluded here, because counting borrowing as income would make every deficit disappear. That single exclusion is what makes the deficit measurable at all.

The cycle

An Indian financial year runs April to March, and the same year's numbers are published at four different stages.

Stage	When	What it is
Budget Estimates	February, before the year starts	The plan, voted by Parliament
Monthly accounts	Monthly, about a month in arrears	Actual cash, unaudited
Revised Estimates	February, as the year ends	The plan, updated with ten months of reality
Actuals	Later, after audit	What happened

Three consequences worth carrying.

A budget figure is a plan, not a measurement. When a newspaper reports "the government will spend ₹53.47 lakh crore", that is an intention Parliament approved. The monthly accounts are where you find out whether it is happening.

The monthly accounts are unaudited and provisional. The CGA says so on the page: actuals are unaudited provisional figures. They are the fastest honest number available and they will move.

The comparison that matters is actual against plan, which is why the CGA prints every line as a percentage of the Budget Estimate. Chapter 5 is about reading those percentages, and about the trap in them.

Who publishes what

Three institutions, and knowing which is which saves confusion.

The Ministry of Finance publishes the Budget — the plan, in February, with the Finance Bill, the Expenditure Budget and the Receipt Budget.

The Controller General of Accounts publishes the monthly accounts: what was actually received and spent, compiled from the government's own payment system. This is the document this subject is built on.

The Comptroller and Auditor General audits the accounts afterwards and reports to Parliament. Different office, different job, confusingly similar name — the CGA keeps the books and the CAG checks them.

What this subject will and will not do

It will explain what the numbers are, how they relate, and how to read the monthly release — using India's actual figures for the first half of 2026-27 throughout, each traceable to the CGA document linked at the end of every chapter.

It will not tell you whether the deficit is too large. That is a question about what the spending achieves, what the borrowing costs, and what else the money could have done, and economists who agree on every figure in these accounts disagree about it. What the subject can do is make sure that when you form a view, it is a view about the right quantity — which, after chapter 4, is probably not the one you expected.

The point

A government's accounts are receipts and expenditure, each split between revenue items that recur and capital items that change the balance sheet — and the split matters because borrowing to build is defensible in a way that borrowing to run is not. Borrowing is excluded from receipts, which is the exclusion that makes a deficit measurable. The Union government's actual monthly figures are published by the Controller General of Accounts about a month in arrears, unaudited and provisional, and in the first half of 2026-27 they showed ₹18,35,422 crore received against ₹25,49,835 crore spent.