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Poland Military Budget
The Polish military budget had begun to shrink somewhat
by
1988, but major cuts occurred between 1989 and 1991. In
1991, for
example, the Ministry of National Defense proposed to the
Sejm a
defense budget of 29 trillion zloty (for the value of the
zloty-- see Glossary);
the Sejm approved a budget of 23 trillion
zloty,
but subsequent cuts lowered the total to 16 trillion
zloty. Some
22.5 percent of the 1990 defense budget was allotted to
purchase
of arms and equipment, and 61.5 percent went to
maintaining
manpower levels. Military experts considered the former
figure
too low to even maintain Polish equipment in status quo
condition, leaving no funds for modernization. At the same
time,
the manpower figure was inflated by the communist legacy
of
redundant bureaucracy filled with senior officers. The
1991
budget made a nominal allotment of 10 percent for
procurement of
new equipment. Although cuts in senior military staff were
expected to remedy the chronic imbalance between personnel
and
equipment allocations, in the first part of 1992 some 80
percent
of the military budget went to maintaining personnel.
The Sejm cut another 11 percent from the budget for
1992,
causing planners again to reassess the structure and
equipment of
the armed forces. At that point, the Ministry of National
Defense
owed a debt of about US$70 million to Polish defense
industries.
Data as of October 1992
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