New Delhi:
The Minister of Finance, Nirmala Sitharaman, in an exclusive interview after the budget to NDTV said that the government has not reduced defense expense, but assured that defense pensions and acquisition expenses are never reduced.
“We pay much attention. This time there was also no problem in the defense budget. But we must understand the peculiarity of the defense budget. The year in which the payment must be made, that year has a greater provisioning to do,” said Mrs. .
“The year in which the order is made, it is the delivery that must be paid. The payments are distributed in the long term … I can say with confidence and we must recognize the fact that almost 60 percent of the components made in India They are bought by defense units, “said Sitharaman, added that it is a different matter if a large ticket purchase must be made from another country.
“Mainly, consumables and other things are bought in India. We make defense components not only for the domestic market, we also export them. That is why we have crossed the profits of RS 25,000 million rupees with exports of defense components exports “The Minister of Finance said.
In Budget 2025, Mrs. Sitharaman left RS 6.81 Lakh Crore Crore as the defense budget for fiscal year 2026, an increase of 9.53 percent on the assignment of RS 6.22 Lakh Crore for the current prosecutor. The Armed Forces have been seeking to acquire new weapons systems in the face of China and Pakistan’s security challenges.
Of this, RS 1.8 Lakh million rupees has been allocated to capital expenses that largely includes weapons of purchase, aircraft, war ships and another military hardware. The defense budget is around 1.9 percent of the projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the increase in allocation is around 6.2 percent compared to the reviewed assignment of RS 6.41 Lakh Crore for the current fiscal year.
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