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It is the season of budgets around the globe. This reveals the mountains of monies spent on weapons of mass destruction. Increased militarization is a scandal in today's world where this money could be used for life giving choices such as education and health services. India's defense budget is said to be about five times as much as Pakistan's.
The daily newspaper “The Dawn” of 8th April announced that the United States Government has approved one billion dollars of military arms sales to Pakistan. Tragic is the fact that Pakistan's defence bill has increased by 11.6 % to 19 % of expenditure.
In reality this is much more when one takes into the debt issue. It is said that 36.5 % of the budget will be spent on the repayment of foreign loans and debt-servicing. Foreign debt stands at $60 Billion. http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-3-305864-Pakistan-pays-$1535-billion-in-external-debt-servicing
It is further stated that 24 % is spent on running the government, giving subsidies and on other expenditures.
That leaves less than 20% allocation for education,health, agriculture, communications, water, power, resettlement of internally displaced people (because of the war operations in the north, next to the Afghanistan border,) and various development projects. Some state that the amount spent on education and health services is only a few percent each. This results in very poor quality government health and education services.
By Fr Dan Harding
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