I am sure all countries cook these figures up to a greater/lesser degree.
CHANTILLY, VA, US: This is with respect to Pervez Tahir’s article of March 25 titled “Fudging the defence budget figures”. Anyone with a modicum of common sense who has some familiarity with Pakistani data (of all kinds) knows that the least reliable is that which pertains to defence spending. I am sure all countries cook these figures up to a greater/lesser degree. But that is not justification for doing so in the first place.
I believe the military pensions (which are huge) were taken out and put under the civilian side. I think India does the same. There are a lot of dual-use allocations which are also put under the civilian head.
Finally, there is the billion dollar question of where our nuclear programme/bomb-making (which is thriving) gets its funding from — the defence budget or some other allocation? No one seems to have the answer to that question. May be there is a military babu somewhere who has a little black book?
Meekal Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, March 26th, 2011.
