Defence budget transparency rated 'moderate to low'
Malaysia's defence budget was found by an international index in 2010 to have ‘moderate to low’ transparency.
Malaysia's defence budget was found by an international index in 2010 to have ‘moderate to low’ transparency.
According to the Transparency of Defence Budgets Report by Transparency International launched in Subang today, Malaysia scored 4.5 points with 12 being the most transparent.
This places Malaysia alongside countries like Afghanistan, Thailand, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Malaysia is among others behind Indonesia, Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea, who had ‘moderately’ transparent defence budgets.
According to TI representative Mark Pyman (right), the report was based on results of the Open Budget Index 2010 plus additional answers to a TI questionnaire.
The Open Budget Index measures the level of transparency in national budgets.
Pyman said that among reasons for Malaysia’s ranking was the “high level of aggregation” in the defence budget.
“It is legitimate that there be secrets (in defence spending) but if this is the case we expect Parliament to be able to debate the secrets.
“Parliament should be able to scrutinise the secret items,” he said, calling for a parliamentary select committee on defence.
Pyman said at present, the defence budget is not revealed at a detailed enough level that it can be scrutinised.
“Malaysia ranked far below other countries (for this), where the budget lacked details and no audits were undertaken of the secret programmes,” he said.
He, however, admitted that the report does not look at the spending of Singapore, which spends the most on defence among South-East Asian countries.
Neither does it look at military heavyweight Israel, said Pyman, as these two countries were not included in the Open Budget Index 2010 for unclear reasons.
95% of Colombia’s defence budget open
Earlier, he highlighted a best-case practice in Colombia, resulting in 95 percent of its defence budget being made public.
He said that the ministry procedures required that the secretary-general sign off on all procurements which need to be classified as secret.
“(Bureaucrats) will say ‘There’s no way I’m going to take my boots tender to the secretary-general to make it secret’,” he said.
Colombia’s defence acquisition budget is larger than Malaysia’s, he said.
Pyman added that generally 95 percent of all defence budgets are not sensitive information - like purchase of boots or yoghurt - but are deemed confidential due to “bad habits”.
“It just makes life easier (for the bureaucrats and ministers) if everything is secret,” he said.
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