First Ever International Seminar on Defence Finance and Economics opens in New Delhi on Monday
- Seminar will bridge gap between Think Tanks and Practitioners
Tweet-- Nearly 500 delegates from across the country and abroad will be coming together in New Delhi to take part in the first ever, 3-day International Seminar on Defence Finance and Economics (ISDFE) beginning on Monday. The foreign delegates numbering about 80 will be coming from 28 different countries including the United States, UK and China. The Seminar seeks to comprehensively address all issues relating to defence planning, acquisition, expenditure, optimisation and oversight issues.
Briefing newspersons about the ISDFE, the Secretary, Defence
Finance Shri Vinod Mishra said "it will bridge the gap between think
tanks and practitioners by bringing them together on one platform and
will also demystify some of the complex concepts used in defence
finance". He said, defence spending worldwide has come to represent a
mandatory level of insurance, which would lend meaning to the innate
economic, social, civilisational strength of nations. The underlying
concern is to ensure a reasonably secure environment for sustained
economic development and growth depending on the geo-strategic
realities and threat perception of individual nations. The evolution of
an appropriate and economically sustainable blend of defence strategies
and capabilities to fulfil this role is the continuing agenda of all
nations. Optimising the aggregate resource base of all nations and
addressing the root cause of conflict and unrest such as poverty,
social alienation, religious fundamentalism and the like can only
contribute towards keeping the minimum defence deterrence levels within
containable and affordable limits but the neglect of essential defence
capabilty built up can have perilous consequences. The challenges
before economic planners is thus to assess these mandatory levels of
national insurance and earmark concomitant resources from the nation's
kitty, he said.
To be inaugurated by the External Affairs Minister Shri
Pranab Mukherjee the ISDFE will deliberate on seven themes, these are
Defence Strategies and Economics, Optimal Resource Allocation in
Defence, Myriad Dimensions in Defence Acquisition, Offset Issues and
Project Management Concerns, Defence Reserch and Development, Defence
Manpower Issues, Audit and Accountability in Defence Expenditure and
Procurement and Cost Efficient Logistic Management in Defence.
Describing the 7 themes as the 7 pillars of 'defence wisdom', Shri
Mishra said the Seminar is expected to help bring about a change in the
way defence planners and administrators think about resource allocation
for this vital sector.
Giving details of some of the themes, Shri Mishra said that
the first session of the seminar Defence Strategies and Economics will
have three distinct sub-themes. The first sub-theme concerns the core
issues in defence economics. This would cover issues such as the
emergence and evolution of defence economics, the impact of
globalisation and new security challenges on defence economics and the
new areas of challenge and research in defence economics. This
sub-theme deals primarily with conceptual issues and the future of
defence economics.
The second sub-theme deals with trends in defence
expenditure. With the world expendtiure on defence on the rise, the
discourse is expected to focus on its reasons and implications.
The third sub-theme concerns affordability of defence. The
question of competing demand of the social sector inevitably presents
itself in any discourse on affordability of defence. This puts a great
strain on the credibility and utility of defence economics as a tool of
decision making, he said.
In regard to all the three sub-themes, the Indian perspective
is likely to generate interest in India, despite being among the
world's fifteen highest spenders on defence, spends less than 20
dollars per capita - the lowest among the top fifteen. This raises the
question of direct linkage between the level of defence spending and
the degree of security, Shri Mishra said.
Under the topic of Optimal Resource Allocation, Shri Mishra
said issues such as formulation of integrated defence plans,
transparency in defence planning, cross country experience in outcome
budgeting and various accounting reforms undertaken in some advanced
countries, will be discussed.
The topic of Myriad Dimensions of Defence Acquisitions is
likely to generate a lot of interest among the participants as it is a
complex process with few paralells in civil sector. 'Since the cost of
errors in choice increases with the complexity of weapon systems and
platforms being procured, it is crucial to make the correct choice and
not to acquire a system that has become technologically obsolete by new
developments. The choices have to be made in the backdrop of balancing
scarce resources against competing demands and lobbying of special
interests of respective services', Shri Mishra said.
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