South Africa slashes defence budget

South Africa has slashed its 2010 defence budget by 4.1 per cent compared to the previous year.

This represents a 15.9 per cent decrease from what had been forecast due to a serious financial crisis in the continent's one-time economic powerhouse.

Funding through 2011 will now amount to ZAR30.72 billion (USD4 billion) instead of a planned ZAR36.5 billion; the following two years will also see substantial decreases that will, cumulatively, amount to a ZAR16.67 billion cut over three years.

Some of the cuts were generated by the ZAR4.5 billion short-term 'saving' resulting from South Africa's decision to withdraw from the A400M military transport aircraft programme.

There has, however, been no comparative accounting for the alternative options, which are likely to fall outside of the three-year medium-term expenditure framework. The impact of the remaining ZAR12.17 billion cut will be worsened by the impact of higher salary scales adopted earlier this year (ZAR2.18 billion over the three-year period), while the end of the deployment in Burundi will bring only small savings, even assuming no other peacekeeping mission is undertaken.