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TANGIER: Pakistan hopes to lower its costly military expenditure in the next fiscal year to below the 16 per cent it took of the state's budget in the current 2011-2012 fiscal year, the army's spokesman said on Saturday.
The cash-strapped country allocated “around $5 billion to the army's budget” in the current fiscal year, military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in the Moroccan city of Tangier.
“That's the equivalent of 16 per cent of the state's budget,” said Athar.
Asked if the percentage figure would increase in the next fiscal year, Athar said: “Hopefully not because for about five years, the military budget remained at between 13 per cent and 14 per cent.
“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.
With one of the world's lowest tax-to-GDP ratio, reaching around 10 per cent, Pakistan is growingly dependent on foreign funds and loans, even for development projects.
