|
Hungary Expenditures
The military budget underwent a series of reductions in
the
late 1980s because of the country's worsening economic
problems.
The 1987 estimated military budget, based on Ministry of
Finance
information, was US$867 million (40.745 billion forints).
The
1989 budget was cut to US$576 million (40.3 billion
forints) even
before January 1, 1989. The proportion of the military
budget
devoted to the acquisition of new technology dropped from
32
percent in 1988 to 16 percent in 1989. From 1980 to 1985,
this
proportion had averaged about 50 percent of the military
budget.
In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw
Pact
countries expressed displeasure with the relatively low
Hungarian
defense budget, but this pressure did not induce the
Hungarians
to increase the percentage of the gross domestic product
(GDP--see Glossary)
devoted to defense. Only Romania spent a smaller
percentage of GDP on national defense than Hungary, but in
absolute numbers Hungary's outlay was the smallest in the
Warsaw
Pact.
By contrast, the funds spent by the government for
armed
forces subject to the Ministry of Interior and the
Workers' Guard
increased by nearly 22 percent from 1987 to 1988 and by
nearly 24
percent from 1988 to 1989. Much of this increase, however,
was
expected to be canceled out by inflation and price reform.
The budget for the defense and interior ministries had
to be
approved by the defense committee of the National
Assembly, a
body that managed to increase its power during the late
1980s.
Nevertheless, in 1989 the committee once again approved
the state
budgets for the ministries of defense and interior and,
for the
first time, the Workers' Guard, without inquiring about
how the
money was to be spent.
Data as of September 1989
|
