Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani recently promised to freeze Pakistans defence budget to demonstrate good intentions towards India.
Indians may be interested that while the Rs. 296 billion allocation ($47.3 billion) presented in the Finance Bill earlier this week was an increase of 7.6 per cent over the previous years outlay in absolute terms, analysts are saying that in re al terms, it actually represents a decrease.
Factored into this conclusion are the sky-rocketing prices of oil, double digit inflation and the fall in the value of the Pakistani rupee to the dollar.
But what is exciting people in Pakistan more is that for the first time since the 1965 war with India, the countrys spending on defence until now the holiest of the holies is to come up for discussion before a democratically elected Parliament.
In keeping with the new mood in the country, the government has already revealed more details about the defence budget than in any previous year. The practice until now had been to present it as a one-line item in the Finance Bill. This year, it contained a breakdown under six headings.
Of the total Rs. 296 billion, Rs. 294.9 billion has been allocated to military defence and Rs. 1.17 billion to defence administration.
Of the military defence allocation, Rs. 99 billion will be spent on personnel related expenses. Operating expenses have been fixed at Rs. 82.84 billion and the cost of physical assets Rs. 87.63 billion. The army will spend Rs. 25.73 billion on civil works.
In a major policy move government has decided to do away with the practice of presenting a single line budget for defence. All the relevant details of the defence expenditure are available for review and debate of the Parliament. This will go a long way to bring greater fiscal discipline by inducing more economical use of available resources, Finance Minister Naveed Qamar told the National Assembly while presenting the 2008-2009 budget.
Transparency promised
Transparency in defence spending is what the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim league (N) promised in their 2006 charter of democracy. In addition, the PPP-led government has to live up to it commitment of parliamentary supremacy. But Mr. Qamar has been quick add since then that the National Assembly will discuss the budget only to the extent that it will not hurt national security.
We all are patriotic Pakistani parliamentarians and we hope that during the debate on the defence budget no one will go to the extent that could affect national security, he said at a post-budget press conference.
No one yet knows how much of a debate to expect, but commentators have still praised the move to open out the defence outlay for discussion as a start.
Rome wasnt built in a day, said Ikram Sehgal, a retired major who is the publisher and editor of the monthly Defence Journal. Our defence budget is public money, and there has to be accountability. People have a right to know where the money is being spent, and how it is spent. For too many years it has been outside the public realm, and the government is absolutely right in bringing it before Parliament.
Writing in the Daily Times, Lt. Gen (retd) Talat Masood, a political and security analyst, said the move held considerable merit. Alongside, he demanded scrutiny also of US military assistance to Pakistan since 2001 amounting to over $10 billion.
Civilian control prevents the military from turning into a separate corporate body that is capable of preserving and expanding its diverse spheres of influence, said Lt. Gen. Masood.
In her book Military Inc published last year, Ayesha Siddiqa outlined how the military had turned into Pakistans biggest corporation, estimating its worth at roughly over $ 20 billion. She also argued that the Pakistan militarys predominant role in politics and governance was both propelled by and a result of its need to protect its business interests, and had affected its professionalism.
Lt. Gen. Masood, who once served as a defence secretary, said parliamentary scrutiny of the defence budget would enhance the credibility of the military in the long run. Restoring the Pakistan Armys credibility has been number one on the agenda of the Pakistan Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani after a particularly torrid year for the institution.
Most of 2007, with the unpopular President Pervez Musharraf also the army chief, the image of the Pakistan Army took an unprecedented battering in protests by political parties, lawyers and civil rights activists. One of the demands of protestors on the streets was for a cutback in the defence budget and to place it before the people for scrutiny.
The defence budget this year constitutes 14.7 per cent of the total budget outlay of Rs. 2010 billion, a decrease, though marginal, from last years 17. 1 per cent. Over the last four years, some military spending, such as the allocation for the Rangers, an elite paramilitary, and the estimated Rs. 40 billion ex-servicemen pension bill, are masked as civilian expenditure. That practice continued this year too.
Gen. Kayani, among whose first actions as army chief was to pull out several hundred serving army officers from civilian government departments, is said to have fully supported the move for transparency in the defence budget.
What you saw in the last eight years unfortunately was only one per cent of the army. Ninety-nine per cent of the army is a good, professional soldiering unit, and interested only in soldiering. Whatever Gen. Kayani has been doing has been greeted with great enthusiasm. I am absolutely confident that a majority of the Army will also support this move. The Army, Navy and Air Force will welcome it, because this way, they can also convince the people about their requirement, said Major(retd) Sehgal.
The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Pakistan: debate on defence spending