The union cabinet on Wednesday approved an additional dearness allowance (DA) of six percent for central government employees from July 1."Cabinet today (Wednesday) approved six percent DA to central government employees," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters after a cabinet meeting here.The DA hike will benefit 50 lakh government employees and 56 lakh pensioners, who are entitled to increased dearness relief (DR).DA, paid as proportion of basic pay to compensate for price rise, has been raised to 119 percent from 113 percent of the basic pay.The combined impact on the exchequer on account of DA and DR would be Rs 6,655.14 crore per annum and Rs.4,436.76 crore for a period of eight months from July 2015 to February 2016.In April, the government had hiked DA by 6 percent to 113 percent with effect from January.As per the formula, the DA rate increase is an average of 12-month consumer price index-industrial workers from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015.