India's Defence budget in terms of GDP is inadequate: Navy

New Delhi, Dec 2 (PTI) India's defence budget in terms
of percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is
inadequate and the growing costs of military hardware
necessitate that fund allocation is increased, Navy chief
Admiral Sureesh Mehta said here Tuesday.

"We have a reasonable defence budget, which, at this
point of time, comes out to a reasonable amount in terms of
hard numbers. But I do have a problem with that.

"As a percentage of the GDP, we are constantly going
down. Because the hardware also gets more expensive and there
is a requirement to perhaps move up a little bit," Mehta told
reporters here ahead of the Navy Day on December 4.

India has allocated just over Rs 1 lakh crore for the
defence forces in its 2008-09 budget, which is less than two
percent of the GDP. The government has been maintaining this
percentage point for its defence spending for years now.

Mehta said the armed forces had already put across the
point of low budgetary allocations to the government, but
maintained that he agreed there was no shortage of funds for
defence.

"But if the armed forces do not have enough money to
start with (while purchasing military equipment), they keep
taking the same steps over and over again," he noted,
referring to the procurement procedures adopted by government
to induct modern weaponry and platforms for the Services.

"For, example, if the Navy wants five ships and it has
money only for three, then it is told to take three now and
two later. The Navy has to start the whole procedure once
again to take the two ships later. If it starts with five,
even though the money is spread over several plan periods (it
would help in better procurements)," Mehta added.

Pointing out that the security environment in the South
Asian region was often described as fragile, Mehta said there
were several happenings around here, which needed to be looked
into.

"And what the Navy does is to develop capability to
operate across the full spectrum of conflict, which means from
the benign role to full-scale war. These are the capabilities
that we need to build for ourselves," he said.

Noting that there were many threats in the region, the
Navy chief, referring to Pakistan, said the armed forces
certainly have shifted focus from threat-specific to
capability-specific development.

"For many years, we have been very centric on specific
threats. If Pakistan gets something, then India too should get
something in return or vice versa," he added.

"We have gone well past that stage. We develop
capabilities, work on our maritime capabilities plan, a
long-term plan, which we have for the next 15 years and it
keeps adding as we move along with the intention that we have
the capability to do multi-tasking. Therefore, we build up our
forces in that manner," he pointed out.

Stating that Navy strongly favoured indigenisation, Mehta
said it has 32 warships and six submarines under construction
in India's own shipyards.

"We also have orders for many more and we also have
some coming in from abroad. As you know, we have INS
Vikramaditya (formerly Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier) and
follow-on frigates from Russia, and two tankers, which are
being built with Italian help. In the future, we will have
more submarine orders," he stressed.