Pakistan’s Army gets the bucks, but can’t produce a bang

Field Marshal (FM) Asim Munir has been marketing his ‘Kashmir as jugular vein’ hypothesis to seek larger budgetary allocations for military.

Usually, defence budget increases are not a ‘news item’ for Pakistan, that is highly militarized, and where military rules directly or indirectly and manages a larger than life defence budget to pamper itself and its oligarchical officer class.

Even democratic countries go for budgetary increases during war or crisis times and Pakistan just awarded itself a budgetary increase of 20 per cent over last year’s figures. However, while significant budgetary increases are understood, its efficient utilisation is a different thing. Pakistan suffers from a defence budget conundrum where it is unable to convert large budgetary increases into demonstrable military capability.

Under General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s tenure as Army Chief, even though Pakistan fiddled with a hawkish and aggressive foreign policy and played proxy war game wherever possible, its defence budget growth was restrained.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Fact Sheet on ‘Trends in world military expenditure, 2024 (published in April 2025)’ affirms this hypothesis. Pakistan’s defence budget was $10.2 billion in 2023-24, accounting for 2.7 per cent of the GDP. This was actually 5.1 per cent less than the previous year (2022-23) and 0.7 per cent less than 2015-16 when Pakistan’s defence expenditure accounted for 3.2 per cent of its GDP. Pakistan may have had indirect sources of subsidising its defence sector even though SIPRI figures shows a restrained progression in defence budget during this period.

However, Pakistan seems to be unrestrained under Field Marshal (FM) Asim Munir. Last year, the defence budget went up by 19 per cent. Similar budgetary hike this year was in any case expected. There are plausible reasons to believe that the trends would continue in future.

The erstwhile proxy war strategy in India’s Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is no more cost-effective since they are being suitably responded to. Thus, there is an increasing cost to Pakistan’s military (mis)adventures. In addition,
FM Munir has been marketing his ‘Kashmir as jugular vein’ hypothesis to seek larger budgetary allocations for military.  He is having his way out since he is also the saviour of the Government that was otherwise to be led by Imran Khan and his party.

Pakistan’s political economy of defence has many characteristic features similar to other authoritarian and dictatorial countries.

First, the military acts as a ‘state’ within the state. It is overtly powerful and lords over other institutional pillars in Pakistan. The defence budget increases are made as and when the military asks for it rather than being filtered through Pakistan’s other developmental priorities and resource constraints. For instance, Pakistan’s economy is going through precarious times. Its GDP growth rate has been sluggish, currently pegged at 2.7 per cent. Its forex reserves, at $15 billion, are characteristic of pauperised economies. Pakistan has been reaching out to friendly countries and international financial institutions for bailout packages. The ‘holy cow’ called defence is, however, immune from these economic constraints.

Second, Pakistan has no institutionalised mechanism for optimisation of the defence budget. Its military accounting and audit system is in shambles and financial controllers are scared of doing a professional job. It has a large standing army of more than six lakh and consequently a higher proportion of its defence budget is spent as revenue expenditure. Such large troops only create shallow military capabilities. According to the globalfirepower.com website, Pakistan’s comprehensive military power has actually declined and it is no more in the top ten military powers.

Third, Pakistan’s domestic military industrial complex (MIC) is grossly under-developed, except for some flagship projects like nuclear weapons, missiles and joint ventures like J-17 fighter jet series with China. There are no concrete plans to consolidate and expand the domestic MIC and increase the locally produced weaponry supplies.

Consequently, Pakistan’s military modernisation is highly dependent on imported weapons. For a country that ranks 44th in GDP pecking order, Pakistan comes across as the fifth largest arms importer. According to the SIPRI Fact Sheet on ‘Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2024’ (published in March 2025), Pakistan’s arms imports actually increased from 2.8 per cent of global arms imports during 2015-19 to 4.6 per cent during 2020-24. Eighty one per cent of its weapons come from China, subjecting it to possible future vulnerabilities.

The internal defence debates in Pakistan, is under-developed since the military establishment hounds out proponents of restrained and transparent budgets. Pakistan figures in the lowest category of transparency index prepared by the Transparency International.

Rational academicians like Ayesha Siddiqa who have exposed the pilfering of defence budgets to military business enterprises (she calls them as ‘milbus’) are condemned to live abroad. Those who write within Pakistan on defence budget issues largely toe the official line, justifying the higher defence budget allocations. Some of them misinterpret classical economic thought and proclaim that higher defence budget actually helps the economy!

Authoritarian countries, like Pakistan, that have invested in heavy defence expenditures, have suffered from an exhausted economy, slow growth rates and are unable to support a top-heavy defence burden. In fact, Bangladesh GDP has marched ahead of Pakistan.

Pakistan does not show many attributes of military welfare state to acknowledge the contribution of serving and retired soldier class. Unlike the officer class, the soldier class is condemned to live with low salaries, low pensions, and do not have an institutionalised robust health care system. Pakistan is, in fact, a glaring and perpetual example of ‘military warfare state’.

Pakistan’s polity, consequent to liberal defence budgets, is highly militarised – meant to promote war and war-like engagements with its neighbours. It if it not India, it will be Afghanistan or even Iran. The Baluchistan imbroglio would become another alibi for budgetary increases. Unfortunately, Pakistan as a country does not benefit from these budgetary increases; the generals do. In the absence of any checks and balances, the generals continue to siphon off money or spend the same recklessly without adhering to financial propriety canons. Pakistan’s defence budget conundrum is, therefore, likely to continue.

Note: The author is in the Indian Defence Accounts Service. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.