India Pays More in Interest Than It Would Cost to Simply Buy LIC, Maruti and HCL
In a single year, India’s interest bill alone is big enough to purchase some of its largest corporations wholesale, and still have change left over.
India Pays More in Interest Than It Would Cost to Simply Buy LIC, Maruti and HCL
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Corporate Market Cap as on 31.01.2026 – day before the Union Budget was presented
Source: Demand for Grants from the Union Budget, Market Cap from Tickertape
Rough Copy by thatgurjot
When you add up the demand for grants for each ministry and department in the Union Budget 2026-27, it comes to Rs. 67.5 lakh crores or 6,74,96,84,18,00,000.1 Of this, Rs. 14.4 lakh crores goes into paying off interest on debt – the largest line item in the budget.
It’s hard to image just how much 14.4 lakh crores worth of money is, so here is an analogy.
With just the amount that the government spends on paying off the interest on the debt in one year, you could buy LIC, HCL and Maruti Suzuki – the entire companies!
In fact, the interest payment on the Government’s debt is as big as the combined market cap of –
- India’s top 5 FMCG companies: HUL, ITC, Nestle India, Britannia and Godrej, or
- India’s top 10 insurance companies, or
- India’s top 25 iron & steel companies (with 3.6 lakh crores to spare), or
- India’s top 25 cement companies (+ Kotak Mahindra Bank, because why not)
Some corporations are really massive but the scale at which the government operates is humongous.
Aside: Yes, I know this is a convoluted comparison. The budget represents the funds required to carry out the planned operations in a single year. The market cap represents the future worth of the company as determined by an international market of investors. This is an apple to oranges comparison, but as David Burd says, you can still compare them.
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Not including the Repayment of Debt because that’s just refinancing. ↩︎