Despite financial constraints, our armed forces have always lived up to meet any internal and external threats.
The way they inflicted defeat on terrorists and foiled many Indian plots speaks of their professionalism and discipline.
It is however unfortunate that there are certain elements within country that always resort to propaganda against defence budget or expenditures.
The fact of the matter is that our defence budget is mere pennies when compared with India.
For this fiscal year, the coalition government has proposed Rs 1523 billion rupees defence budget, which shows 11.16 percent increase over estimated allocations of 1370 billion rupees for fiscal year 2021-22.
However a close analysis of this figure shows that budgetary allocation for this head has considerably been reduced in view of inflation and in terms of US dollar from $8.89b to $7.56b.
The proposed defence allocations are 16.02 percent, almost the same as compared to last fiscal year.It has also been reduced from 2.6 percent to 2.2 percent of total GDP.
As also reported, this is for the third consecutive year that armed forces did not demand an increase in defence budget rather defence allocations have come down.
This indicates that top military leadership is fully cognizant of dire economic situation and also making its contributions to stabilise the economy.
For instance, armed forces have also taken a big decision of reducing expenses in different areas including telephone, electricity, gas and water bills besides less consumption of fuel.
This cooperation on part of military leadership must be appreciated and recognised at wider level.
Despite a huge gap in budget, it is a matter of great satisfaction that our forces are not oblivious to the duty of protecting and defending the country.
We cannot match Indian defence budget but given the prevailing hostility, it is very important that we cater to all requirements of our armed forces, which include updating security apparatuses.
Government should cut unnecessary expenditures including those being spent on loss making state owned enterprises and divert the same to defence given the complex situation in our region.
Focus should be given on further strengthening and modernising domestic defence industry, which will also provide impetus to our economy.
For this we can enter into joint ventures with friendly countries such as China and Turkey.
If we can manufacture fighter jet as well as modern tanks, our scientists and engineers have the capability to produce other necessary equipment to meet domestic requirements.
