Roundtable conference: Experts for less spending on defence, more on education
Pakistan is not facing any security threat. There is no need for a 40% budget allocation and Pakistan itself is to blame for all the wars fought with India, said Air Martial (retd) Muhammad Asghar Khan at a roundtable conference here on Thursday.
The conference focused on finding solutions to Pakistan’s problems and was organised by former MNA Marvi Memon. The conference was attended by a large number of politicians, parliamentarians, academicians and the youth.
Khan held defence spending to be the main cause behind the backwardness of the country. He lamented that Pakistan spends only 1% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education as compared to Malaysia and Indonesia who spend more than 30% of their GDP on education.
The former Air Chief Martial said that there is no threat to Pakistan from India as Pakistan had itself initiated all three ‘adventures’ with India. He urged the government to shift the funds allocation towards the social sector.
Marvi Memon said that all of us are very well aware of the colossal crisis facing Pakistan today. We live through corruption, moral decay, price hike, the load shedding, unemployment, lawlessness, terrorism, fear, human right violations, the systematic disintegration of institutions and provinces on a daily basis.” We don’t need to go into the blame game. We are already aware of the trouble makers in Pakistan. We are also aware of the fact that logically those creating the problems cannot be part of finding solutions,” Memon added.
Former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi pointed out that issues of national importance are not discussed in the parliament and even the most positive suggestions and recommendations by the opposition are negated by the treasury members.
Qureshi also highlighted the importance of institutional reforms and the need of maximum interaction among politicians, civil society and civil servants to address the national issues.
Dr Rifat Hussain from Quaid-i-Azam University said Pakistan’s foreign policy should be based on larger national interest and prioritise to build relationships with regional countries and neighbours.
He added that government should follow the policy to ‘seek friends not masters’.
Faisal Bari, an educationist said that Pakistan should spend at least 4% of GDP on education.
He pointed out that 25 million children in Pakistan are out of school, and 65% of those in school attend government schools.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 4th, 2011.
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Lol... Pakistans GDP is about 170 billion defence spending is around 5 that's not 40% how can we spend that 40% on defence when total tax revenue is 9% of GDP. Instead of making the naive and short sighted cuts in defense ...also since 2005 we been spending 2.5 billion dollars a year on frontier corps fata operations. So current defence spending is not long term but dealing with short term problem . Increase taxation India faces no equal threat yet expanding it army by 100000 men and building more airforce forward operating bases near the border
India is a threat Nehru and his children see all of the subcontinent as there's . Sichin war and nuke race was started by India . On both occasions the west or un did not come to our aid or put pressure on india
I'm all for rearranging the army expanding naval and counter insurgency capacity.