Hidden military costs common to all nations
- Source: Global Times
- [22:01 March 16 2010]
- Comments
After China announced that its national defense budget would only increase by 7.5 percent this year, Japan's Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi said in a press conference that China's military expenditure is quite unclear.
He said Japan would conduct an investigation themselves while demanding China provide more transparency.
Prior to that, Robert Willard, commander of US Pacific Command, said in the media that China's published defense budget is not accurate, accusing China's military spending of not being "transparent."
Different countries have different methods for accounting for military spending.
Spending calculated as being for military purposes is not always the same in various countries. In this sense, any country will have "hidden military spending."
In the US, the budgets for nuclear energy and space programs are not listed in mili-tary expenditure. State governments, not federal government, manage the budgets for the National Guard. In peacetime, the spending for Coast Guard is listed separately in the Treasury Department.
All US expenditure for military purpose in 2007 may amounts to $800 billion. The situations in Japan and India are the same.
Japan's defense budget does not contain the pensions for veterans, the cost for space programs and the fee for the Coast Guard.
In the fiscal year 2009, India published its defense budget for $29.387 billion. But the final budget for the Defense Ministry, if we count the administration fee and veterans' pensions, will increase to $34.563 billion.
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