Early numbers indicate Canada's budget deficit for the year will come in well below the $53.8-billion figure Finance Minister Jim Flaherty projected in his March budget.
The shortfall between April, 2009, and March, 2010, was $47-billion, the Finance Department said Friday in its Fiscal Monitor.
However, it cautioned that the official, full-year deficit won't be known until September, once end-of-year adjustments are taken into account.
Revenues for the year were $218.7-billion, a decline of $12.7-billion, or 5.5 per cent from a year ago.
The report described the results, particularly for budgetary revenues, as stronger than anticipated in the 2010 budget.
But given the potential for further adjustments as well as ongoing global economic uncertainty, “the government judges that the fiscal projection set out in the 2010 budget remains broadly on track,” the report said.
A year ago, the federal budget deficit was much lower, at $2.2-billion.
But about $19-billion of this year's deficit was due to Ottawa's stimulus plan to boost the economy in the face of last year's recession.
Year-over-year, personal income tax revenues dropped 5.5 per cent and corporate income tax revenues dropped 4.9 per cent.
Program expenses rose 16.6 per cent from last year, reflecting higher employment insurance benefits payments, higher transfers to other levels of government and the auto bailout, among other things.
Public debt charges were down $1.5-billion year-over-year thanks to lower interest rates.
For the month of March, the federal deficit was $6.4-billion, up from $3.5-billion in the same month last year.
Revenues for March rose by $4.3-billion, or 22.8 per cent, because of higher income tax and GST.
Corporate income tax revenues for March rose a striking 130.8 per cent, while personal income tax revenues rose 11 per cent as more Canadians were on the job than in March, 2009.
Program expenses for March rose 36.4 per cent from the same month in 2009, while transfer payments, meanwhile, rose 15.8 per cent.
