Defence Budget Archives - Page 4 of 12

Standing Committee on Defence’s Prescription for increasing Capital Budget May Not Work

The Thirty-first Report of the Standing Committee on Defence (SCoD)1 was submitted to Parliament on 9 March 2017. The report examined the capital outlay for the defence services for the year 2017–18, procurement policy of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and defence planning. A glance through the report showed that, apart from a rather sketchy analysis of these issues, the committee has only ended up making hackneyed observations and recommendations that have been made repeatedly in the past without much success.

13th Five-Year Defence Plan (2017-22) – A Re-Run of the Past

Achieving the intended outcomes of the 13th five-year defence plan is critically dependent on the ability of the Ministry of Finance to increase the defence budget by at least 100 per cent from next year onward.

DIPP Accords Preference to Local Suppliers in Public Procurement

Indian industry, which is the intended beneficiary of this preference policy, needs to play a proactive role in facilitating the smooth implementation of the order.

Raising Defence Budget to Three Per Cent of GDP

Speaking at the United Service Institution on May 4, 2017, the Chief of the Army Staff said that India needs to spend much more on military modernisation to ensure that economic growth continues unhindered.

Dual Charge – An Opportunity to Fix Financial Management in Defence

It is important to restore the functional self-sufficiency of the finance division of a ministry which handles 17-18 per cent of the total central government expenditure so that it could discharge its responsibilities without real or perceived pressures.

Amit Cowshish
March 21, 2017
IDSA Comments

Defence Expenditure: A Challenge for Defence Economists

The basic challenge for defence economists is to demonstrate that there are other feasible ways of skinning the cat during budget formulation. But the challenge is also inextricably linked with the need for rationalisation of defence expenditure.

Amit Cowshish
March 14, 2017
IDSA Comments

Rebooting the Defence Budget

There is a strong case for abandoning the present approach of looking at the defence budget through the narrow prism of allocation and utilisation, and instead focus on outcomes.

Amit Cowshish
February 28, 2017
IDSA Comments

10 Questions the Standing Committee on Defence needs to ask MoD

The objective of asking these question should be to elicit information that generates a well-informed debate on, and facilitates the result-oriented monitoring of, the MoD’s handling of matters related to the defence budget.

Amit Cowshish
February 13, 2017
IDSA Comments

Would a Non-Lapsable Defence Modernisation Fund Work?

There is a plethora of evidence to show that the problem of establishing a Defence Modernisation Fund does not lie with any ‘rules of business’, but instead with its merit and workability.