HAIDER
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- May 21, 2006
- Messages
- 33,771
- Reaction score
- 14
- Country
- Location
NEW DELHI, Feb 29 (AFP) - India on Friday jacked up defence spending by 10 percent to 26.4 billion dollars, the steepest hike since independence to fund a mammoth modernisation programme. Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram boosted expenditure for the fiscal year ending March 2009 from the previous allocation of 24 billion dollars. India plans to spend at least 30 billion dollars until 2012 to modernise the military with an immediate purchase of 126 warjets costing 12 billion dollars followed by ships, submarines, artillery and other hardware in coming years. Chidambaram set aside 12 billion dollars for arms purchases during the current fiscal year. The 1.23-million-strong army, the world's fourth largest, received nine billion dollars to help modernise mechanised divisions, artillery and air defence units. He committed 1.85 billion dollars to the navy which is shopping for six submarines in addition to the six it bought last year for three billion dollars. He also allotted 2.71 billion dollars for the airforce while the remaining funds were marked for research development and ordnance factories which are in the process of deploying India's guided and ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. The increase was likely to be closely monitored in Pakistan which has accused the nuclear rival of sparking an arms race by spending almost three percent of GDP on its million-plus military forces. For the current fiscal year which ends March 31, India increased defence spending by 7.8 percent. (Posted @ 16:25 PST)
- DAWN - Latest Stories; February 29, 2008
- DAWN - Latest Stories; February 29, 2008