| Submit your comments on this article | |
| India-Pakistan | |
| India seeks more than $200 billion to expand its arsenal | |
| 2016-09-10 | |
For India to meet equipment and weapons requirements necessary to expand its military capabilities in the next eleven years the country will need about $233 billion. There is some doubt as to whether the funds can be raised in that time, Sputnik reported.
The 2016-2017 funding allocation for Capital Head is $37.94 billion, a 2.3 percent increase from last year. Nitin Mehta, a defense analyst based in India, believes that the diminishing value of India’s national currency is going to be a considerable obstacle for India to meet its multi-billion dollar goal. "Given the depreciating Indian rupee and near-stagnant fund allocation in the last two years, it is unlikely that there would be an annual increase of more than 11 percent to meet the target of $233 billion set by LTIPP for the next 11 years," he said. Former Ministry of Defense financial adviser Amit Cowshish disagrees, offering, "The amount of US $233 billion works out to approximately 15,000,000 million Indian rupees. The current year's allocation for capital acquisitions is around 700,000 million rupees. Taking this as the base and assuming a reasonable yearly growth of 10 to 11 percent, the total allocation over the next 11 years would anyway be close to 15,000,000 million rupees. So any acquisition plan that is based on this financial assumption would be quite realistic." According to LTIPP nearly 100 single-engine fighter jets, 12 submarines, more than 120 twin-engine fighter aircrafts, 500 helicopters and an aircraft carrier are listed to be purchased. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 How does it compare with Chinese defence spending? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-09-10 12:33 |
| #1 Something like $100-200 per citizen? Seems like a reasonable price for defense. Only 10% of their per capita GDP. Talk to the Slumdog Millionaire. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2016-09-10 12:07 |