(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Defence budget has been jacked up to rs700.
the military however had sought an increase of rs173 billion in defence spending for the coming fiscal year insisting that pakistan military’s expenses are lowest in the region given the volatile security environment.
the budget document presented before the parliament did not give a break up about the allocation of defence spending among the three forces. but according to defence ministry officials pakistan army gets 48 per cent pakistan air force 20 per cent and navy10 per cent.
out of rs700.2 billion outlay rs293.5 billion have been allocated for employees related expenses rs180.2 billion for operating expenses and rs152.8 billion for physical assets.
however the figures do not include rs163.4 billion allocated for pensions of the military personnel that were taken out of defence and injected into the civilian budget besides a separate allocation for the security related expenses — a move which critics say seeks to conceal the actual defence allocation.
in addition to this the military would also be given rs165 billion under the contingent liability and rs85 billion under the coalition support fund (csf).
this means that in reality a whopping rs1113 billion has been allocated for the military which is about 28.2 per cent of the country’s total budget. however according to the military given the 8.6 per cent inflation the real term increase would be a meagre 2.57 per cent
while reviewing the budget brief of previous years it was revealed that in last five years while the defence expenditure has been almost doubled from around rs350 billion in 2009-10 to rs700 billion this year the rate at which it has been increasing has been diminishing.
the year-on-year comparison of increase in the rate of defence budget as opposed to increase in the rate of inflation shows that while the defence budget was drastically increased by 21.46 per cent in 2009-10 but the government expenditure on defence is increasing at a diminishing rate.
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