ISLAMABAD: The government increased the defence budget for the outgoing fiscal year by nearly 6% to over Rs1.45 trillion to meet the needs of the armed forces including salary requirements.
According to reports, the armed forces are likely to be allocated Rs1.453 trillion in the budget for the next fiscal year, which would be about Rs80 billion higher than the outgoing year’s allocation of Rs 1.37trillion.
The defence budget would be about 16 percent of total outlay The increased amount will be consumed mostly by the allocation for employees-related expenses, salaries and allowances.
Other budget expenditures include civil works,which caters for the military infrastructure development and repairs; physical assets that include local purchases of arms and ammunition, import-related costs, and operating expenses, which cover costs incurred on transport, ration, training and treatment.
The Ministry of Defence had demanded an additional Rs80 billion defence budget for “critical shortfalls” in addition to making adjustments in the budget for spending on the Jinnah Naval base, Naval Base Turbat and office buildings.
The decision to increase the defence budget by another Rs80 billion was taken by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet . Federal Minister for Finance Miftah Ismail presided over the ECC meeting that approved Rs80 billion supplementary budget for the armed forces or to the extent of the actual additional expenditures being incurred.
For the outgoing fiscal year, the National Assembly had approved Rs1.373 trillion defence budget. The Ministry of Defence received Rs153 billion or 11.8% additional money in this fiscal year over the revised budget of the previous year.
The defence spending will be equal to 2.2% of the Gross Domestic Product, excluding expenditures on the armed forces development programme.
In July last year, the previous government had given 15% special allowance of the running basic pay to all the ranks of the armed forces, which jacked up the army budget requirements by another Rs38 billion per annum.
