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Pakistan raises defence spending

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has raised the outlay on defence expenditure by about 17 per cent in its national budget for the financial year 2009-2010 that was presented to Parliament on Saturday.

The outlay is Rs.343 billion ($4.2 billion), an increase of Rs.47 billion over last year’s defence budget of Rs.296 billion.

The actual expenditure was closer to Rs.312 billion.

“Our armed forces are in the forefront of the war against terror and in fighting insurgency in the country. Our western border is most volatile and faces the brunt of insurgency,” Deputy Minister of Finance Hina Rabbani Khar told Parliament.

“We now face the prospect of incurring huge costs on account of counter-insurgency expenditures.”

In an address to the nation in the early hours of Saturday, President Asif Ali Zardari reiterated that Pakistan would fight the Taliban “to the finish”, and announced an increase in the allowances of soldiers involved in the operations against the Taliban equivalent to one month’s pay.

He also promised to extend this benefit to the rest of the armed forces from January 1, 2010.

The Rs.2.48-trillion budget is targeting a growth rate of 3.3 per cent.

The growth rate fell to two per cent this year. Ms. Khar blamed terrorist attacks for undermining macro-economic stability and stunting prospects of growth.

The outlay on defence expenditure for Pakistan has gone up by 15.8 per cent and not by "about 17 per cent" as mentioned in the first paragraph of an article "Pakistan raises defence spending" (June 14, 2009).

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