A few weeks ago I provided a post about Thailand’s military spending as a percentage of GDP. The World Bank data I used finished in 2008 so I provided a very crude estimate to cover recent years.
Chris Baker has sent me this more accurate graph of recent trends. He writes:
The budget figures come from the Ngop praman doi sankhep (Budget in Brief) from the Bureau of the Budget, easy to find on the web, using Table 3.1, line “Defence Affairs and Services.” The GDP data are from the NESDB. I’ve projected 2010 at 5.5% growth and 2011 at 4.5%. The original graph was done by Suehiro. We’ve just extended it up to date
Thanks very much Chris.
The recent picture is a bit more complicated than my linear estimate, but the overall story is pretty similiar.
As usual, this is excellent stuff from Chris Baker.
It would be nice to see an occasional article or two in the Australian press by Baker and Pasuk (she is after all, MA from Monash). But unfortunately all we get currently is re-cycled
extracts from European or American reports of Thailand.
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The government may claim that the sharp rise since 2006 is attributed to by the breakout of unrest in the Deep South, too. Disaggregated data might be more useful in this regard, i.e., singling out data of the Deep South from the rest.
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This isn’t that straight forward.
The FY 2009 military budget was actually set by the Somchai government in 2008 – and it showed a large jump relative to GDP.
Whereas the FY 2010 military budget set by the Abhisit government was set in 2009 – and showed a relative decline. Note that the economy didn’t do very well in 2009, which means that the Abhisit government actually did a fairly good job of reigning in the military.
Now the FY 2011 budget shows a fairly large gain, however in relative terms it’s not higher than the Somchai government’s military budget. Also consider the fact that some significant military expenditures, like periodic maintenance, can’t be deferred indefinitely.
Say what you will about the overall trend in post-coup spending, but it’s tough to make a truthful generalization about how the Abhisit government has paid off the brass.
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In this article in Nation
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/09/23/national/Military-officials-&039;involved&039;-30138552.html ,
“News reports cited different numbers of RPG rockets missing, ranging from 30 to 39. Many other media reports missed referring to 8,000 5.56-mm rounds for M-16 assault rifles and a large number of 7.62-mm bullets for the M-60 machine-gun, which are also reported missing in Army documents,” Gen. Anupong is reported as stating that it was probably an inside job by military officials & some outsiders. “The depot is charged with storing of weapons, not the unit that uses them. The storage is supervised through contracted security, not through military command. We need to look into the matter thoroughly on how security can be handled effectively through private contracting.”
What kind of army is it that cannot handle the guarding of its own weapons stores? And how much do they spend on this ludicrous & apparently unsuccessful exercise? Further, how is it that they don’t even know whether it is 30 or 39 RPG rockets?
“Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said initial reports given to him suggested the weapons were stolen to be sold “to the outside”, and declined to give details when asked whether the buyers were in Cambodia.” ….(yawn)
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I added a bit more for good measure.
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Michael: I’m guessing the contracted out security is a nice little money spinner for the general who owns the security company.
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Just out of curiousity.. why the increase for 2011?
According to http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/08/20/politics/Pheu-Thai-attacks-Bt170-bn-defence-budget-30136241.html the current figure is 1.5%. Not almost 2% as your chart indicates.
Please clarify.
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