Former prime minister and Chairperson of Pakistan Peoples Party Benazir Bhutto has expressed concern over "huge increase" in the proposed allocation for military.
According to press reports, the military has demanded an increase of 25 percent in its budget, amounting to Rs 61 billion. In a statement, the former prime minister said that it was illogical to make such gigantic demands at a time when people were committing suicides due to grinding poverty.
"It is bad governance that on the one hand Islamabad is going with a begging bowl to borrow more money and increase the debt burden on the common man and, on the other, is extravagantly spending hard earned resources of Pakistan on military expenditure at a time when tension with India had eased," she said. Benazir said the PPP had called upon the regime to defer military expenditures, such as purchase of billion-dollar planes and building a second GHQ and instead use the monies for earthquake rehabilitation. It was the sound and logical way to protect the interests of the common man as well as to make the country self-reliant, she said.
The former prime minister recalled that two years ago the military expenditure was budgeted at Rs 193 billion and was tersely explained in half a line: "to defray salary and other expenses" in the over 4,000-page budget documents. Without questioning, the Parliament promptly approved the budgeted demand, she said, adding the current year's military expenditure was budgeted at Rs 223 billion, excluding military pensions, which were enormous due to the early age at which personnel retire.
The total national budget was about Rs 1,100 billion, she said, and referred to the official figures, which indicated that "the country yearly spends Rs 33 billion on pensions of which the military pensions amount to Rs 27 billion and the civil pensions come to rupees six billion." She said these amounts did not take into consideration billions more spent on the Rangers, civil armed forces.
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