ISPR's spokesperson Major-General Athar Abbas has said that Pakistan had maintained its defence budget at between 13 % to 14%. “It was increased only this year because of the environment of security, and a lot of things that was required by the paramilitary in particular.
“I don’t see the military expenditure taking in more than $5billion (in the next fiscal year),” he added. Pakistan government’s fiscal year runs from July 1 of the previous calendar year to end-June of the following year.The state increased by close to 12 per cent the budget for the military in 2011-2012, in what analysts link to an annual inflation rate that hovers around 13 percent.
Pakistan’s budget targets a budget deficit of 4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) for 2011/12 and an economic growth of 4.2 per cent.Funds allocated by the government to the Pakistani army still represent a “very small amount”, he said.“There is a lot of scope of enhancing the revenues of the government. If they go up by 70 or 80 per cent the military budget will boil down to 10 per cent,” Athar said.
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