The government wants all departments to slash their non-priority spending by a tenth to help the country narrow the fiscal deficit to the targeted 4.8 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year.

The government uttered its demand for reduction in non-plan spending during a meeting of financial advisors.

After the meeting, which was chaired by Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday, minister of state for finance J D Seelam said, "We want all the departments to spend their funds (plan expenditure) . (and adopt) austerity measures for non- plan expenditure."

Departments were asked to achieve the cuts by slashing their non-priority expenses, such as expenses on tours by bureaucrats and ministers.

The cuts in unnecessary tours, conferences, subsidies, defence purchases and the like are expected to save Rs 100,000 crore for the government.

Mr. Chidambaram has already declared that he wouldn't cross fiscal deficit limit for this year without condensing plan expenditure.

However, the combination of depreciation in the value of rupee and a revenue shortfall because of the economic slowdown is feared to cause heavier subsidy burden on the government. The government has prescribed total expenditure of Rs 16.65 lakh crore in budget for the current fiscal, of which Rs 5.21 lakh crore (31.3%) has already been spent during April to July quarter.