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 1, up 5.2 per cent from 2012-13 when the budget stood at 1.93 trillion Indian rupees.
In 2012-13, the increase had been 17 per cent and the year before that spending was bumped up by 12 per cent to fund a modernisation programme that has turned India into the world’s biggest arms importer. Read more…
Source: Dawn.com
