ISLAMABAD, May 20: The government is likely to allocate Rs273 billion for defence budget in 2006-07 to help the armed forces to begin their $9 billion military procurement programme over the next five-year period.

Reliable sources told Dawn on Saturday that defence authorities have sought an additional Rs50 billion in next year’s budget, following 27 per cent increase in India’s defence budget.

The defence budget for the current financial year was fixed at Rs223.5 billion, 3 per cent of the GDP, now being considered as “inadequate” for 2006-07, keeping in view increasing defence requirements of all three services.

“Roughly 20 per cent increase has been sought in the new defence budget,” a source said, adding that defence authorities have justified increasing their budget.

He said there had been sanctions in one form or another during the last many years due to which there were no significant military purchases. “But now for the next financial year a list has been given by the defence authorities to the government for making new purchases,” he added.

In real terms, the source claimed, Pakistan’s defence budget had been static for the last few years which was not possible any more after India announced a massive increase in its new budget.

However, another source said that he did not believe that the country’s defence budget remained static, adding it used to be enhanced after the announcement of every new budget.

Sources said that a decision had also been taken to place some details of the defence budget in parliament to satisfy opposition legislators. This time, they said, there would not be a “one-line defence budget” and that people would have some details, including separate budgets for all the three services like that of India.

They said that the secretary, National Security Council, Tariq Aziz, had been entrusted with the task of looking into the issue of providing more details to the people through the parliament about defence expenditures.

They said that even though there existed a full-fledged system within the army to monitor the defence budget, however some of the details were likely to be placed before the parliament this year for public consumption.

One of the salient features of the new defence budget, sources said, was the likely financing of pensions for defence personnel from the defence budget instead of from the civilian expenditure as had been the case in the past.