By Saikat Chatterjee
NEW DELHI, July 6 (Reuters) - India's government will be forced to pack in a dramatic increase in borrowing in the next three months, pressing the central bank to increase purchases of bonds from the market.
* Yields on benchmark 10-year bonds, which jumped 16 basis points above Friday's close on the budget announcement, should keep climbing this week.
* The size of the new borrowing requirement -- a gross 4.51 trillion rupees ($93 billion) in the fiscal year to March 2010 -- was far larger than the market had expected.
* The amount is 14 percent above the median forecast in a Reuters poll of 3.95 trillion rupees, and 23 percent higher than an interim budget estimate in February of 3.65 trillion rupees. It even topped the highest forecast in the Reuters poll of 4.34 trillion rupees. And the actual borrowing may be higher still.
* Typically demand for bank credit surges in the second half of the fiscal year because the harvest season kicks in from the October. Festivals such Diwali in October and November also drive up loan demand.
* Keen to prevent its market presence from causing a credit squeeze in an economy sideswiped by the global financial crisis, the government will probably pack in most of the extra borrowing by Sept. 30.
* Because the government had already raised 25 percent above its previous target in the last six auctions, the market had been expecting only a marginal increase in the borrowing requirement for the six months to Sept. 30. The numbers released on Monday blew those positions out of the water.
* The Reserve Bank of India had estimated government borrowing in April-September at 2.41 trillion rupees. With 1.6 trillion already raised, the market had been positioned for about 800 billion to 1 trillion rupees worth of bond issuance by end September. It will now have to digest at least 600 billion rupees more than that.
* That would take weekly issuance to an unprecedented 138 billion rupees per week until the end of September at a time of waning demand for government bonds.
* In a note last week, Kotak Mahindra Bank said demand from all major investors, including banks and insurance companies, stood at 2.9 trillion rupees for 2009/10.
* That leaves the central bank to plug the gap with bond buying, a controversial policy that appeared to be on the wane with ever smaller purchases. LINKS > Full budget coverage............[ID:nSP190820] (Reporting by Saikat Chatterjee; Editing by Neil Fullick)