Archive for the ‘News and Opinion’ Category

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has warned he will resist further cuts to the armed forces in Chancellor George Osborne’s forthcoming spending review. After No 10 warned publicly last month that the military would not be immune from further financial retrenchment, Mr Hammond made clear that he would resist anything more than modest “efficiency savings”.  Read [...]

India yesterday enhanced annual budgetary allocation for defence expenditure by 4.5 per cent to Rs 2.03 lakh crore for the financial year 2013-14, setting at rest speculation that the country’s slowing economic growth could affect its military acquisitions. Of the total defence outlay for 2013-14, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who presented his budget in Parliament [...]

RANGOON—Burma’s Union Parliament approved the government’s US $1.15 billion military budget on Friday with an overwhelming majority. More than $600 million will be spent on military hardware, accounting for over half of the controversial budget this year, according to documents obtained by The Irrawaddy. In a joint vote by the Upper House and Lower House [...]

India Thursday hiked its military spending to Rs 203,672 crore (Rs 2.03 trillion/$37 billion), an increase of five percent over the Rs.193,407 crore outlay for 2012-13 but an increase of 14 percent in real terms. The budget hike, in real terms, amounts to Rs. 25,168 crore ($4.57 billion) over the revised estimates of Rs 178, [...]

NEW DELHI: India hiked its defence spending by only five per cent on Thursday for the next financial year, far below previous increases with the military one of the apparent losers in the 2013/2014 budget. Finance Minister P Chidambaram raised defence spending to 2.03 trillion Indian rupees ($37.45 billion) for the fiscal year starting April [...]

The defence industry is gathering in Abu Dhabi for the biggest military trade show in the Middle East. Last time, it took place at the start of the Arab Spring. Two years on, how has defence spending changed among Gulf states some of the biggest spenders in the world? And where are defence companies targeting [...]

China‘s military has introduced new rules to combat “extravagance and waste” in spending, state media said Sunday, as the country’s new leaders stress austerity to fight official corruption. New Communist Party chief Xi Jinping, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, approved the rules which aim to promote austerity and control expenditure, the [...]