First Intn'l Seminar on Defence Finance

New Delhi, Nov 10 (UNI) Almost 500 delegates from across the country and abroad will be coming together in the national capital next week to take part in the first ever International Seminar on Defence Finance and Economics (ISDFE).

Some 80 foreign delegates -- from 28 countries including the United States, UK and China -- are expected to attend the three-day seminar -- beginning Monday -- which seeks to comprehensively address a wide range of issues relating to defence planning, acquisition, expenditure, optimisation and oversight.

Briefing newspersons about the ISDFE, Defence Finance Secretary Vinod Mishra said it will bridge the gap between think tanks and practitioners by bringing them together on one platform. ''It will also demystify some of the complex concepts used in defence finance,'' he addded.

Defence spending worldwide, he pointed out, had 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....'' Secrretary Mishra said 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 would 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'', he warned.

Therefore, the challenges before economic planners was thus to assess these mandatory levels of national insurance and earmark concomitant resources from the nation's kitty, he observed.

To be inaugurated by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, 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 these seven themes as ''the seven pillars of defence wisdom'', Secretary Mishra said the Seminar was 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, the Defence Finance Secretary said the first session of the seminar Defence Strategies and Economics will have three distinct sub-themes. The first sub- theme -- dealing primarily with conceptual issues and the future of defence economics -- concerns the core issues in defence economics and 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.

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, the Defence Secretary said.

In regard to all the three sub-themes, the Indian perspective is likely to generate interest in India -- which, 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'', Secretary Mishra said.

Under the topic of Optimal Resource Allocation, Secretary 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 would be discussed.

The topic of Myriad Dimensions of Defence Acquisitions was likely to generate a lot of interest among the participants as it is a complex process with few parallels in civil sector.

UNI DG RL PM2227