With a widespread gap between the government's expenditure and revenues, the centre's recourse to the ways and means advances (WMA) will increase, economists said. The Union bugdet will lay down new revenue earning measures which is likely to ease the pressure on the WMA.

The government on Friday placed Rs 5,000 crore with the Reserve Bank. It placed an eight-year paper at 11.75 per cent. The government had raised Rs 4,000 crore from the market on April 15 at the same coupon.

This is the first instance of private placement of debt by the government in the current financial year. In the last fiscal, the government placed Rs 6,000 crore worth of eight- and 10-year papers in March. This was after the government crossed the 75 per cent of the WMA limit.

The WMA advances of the RBI have been shooting up in the newfinancial year. They touched almost 75 per cent of the Rs 11,000-crore limit set for the first half of the financial year on April 3.

The RBI has raised Rs 8,000 crore through two bond issues and the third bond issue -- a Rs 4,000 crore, 10-year paper -- is slated to hit the market on April 30, a day after the credit policy is announced.

"This, in effect, means that till April 24, the government was exceeding its 75 per cent limit. With Rs 9,000 crore being placed by the government in a span of a week, the WMA is set to come down on May 1. On April 10, the WMA stood at Rs 10,463 crore, up from Rs 8,231 crore in the previous year," a senior analyst said. With Friday's private placement, the central government will end up borrowing Rs 17,200 crore in the first month of the new fiscal (assuming that the 10-year paper on April 30 sails through) which constitutes about 31 per cent of the net borrowing programme of Rs 55,000 crore.

"The objective of the RBI is to complete a substantial part of the annualborrowing programme of the government in the first half of the financial year," an economist in a leading foreign bank said.