Defense budget likely to rise by 20% to Rs2,550bln

A proposal has been made to increase the defense budget by 20% for the upcoming year, with an allocation of 2,550 billion rupees for defense.

A proportional share of this budget will be distributed among the three armed forces and inter-services organizations. For the current fiscal year, 2,122 billion rupees were allocated for defense, which amounts to 1.71% of the GDP. The revised estimate for defense expenditure this year is 2,181 billion rupees.

An allocation of 742 billion rupees has been proposed for military pensions, compared to 662 billion rupees in the current fiscal year. The revised estimate for military pensions stands at 676 billion rupees.

The proposed amount for employee-related expenses in the defense budget is 846 billion rupees, whereas this figure was 826 billion rupees in the current fiscal year.

Operating expenses in the defense budget are proposed at 704 billion rupees, up from 547 billion rupees in the current fiscal year. For physical assets, a proposed allocation of 663 billion rupees has been made, compared to 550 billion rupees spent during the current year.

For civil works, the proposed allocation is 336 billion rupees, while 257 billion rupees were spent under this head in the ongoing fiscal year.