Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/COLOMBO: Sri Lankan State Minister of Defence Premitha Bandara Thennakoon has said that his country could slash the size of the army by a third to 135,000 personnel next year and 100,000 by 2030 as the government is trying to cut costs in the face of the worst economic crisis in more than seven decades.
Financial crisis
According to the TRT World, Thennakoon said that “the military spending has state-borne expenditures which indirectly stimulates and opens avenues for economic growth by assuring national and human security.”
Sri Lanka was still reeling from months of worst food and fuel shortages, making daily life a misery for its 22 million people last year.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe has hiked taxes and imposed harsh spending cuts to smooth the passage of an expected International Monetary Fund bailout package following a government debt default.
Sri Lanka’s armed forces are next on the chopping block, with the defence ministry announcing it would retire 65,000 soldiers from its 200,000-strong army over the year.
The cuts make up the lion’s share of plans to downsize Sri Lanka’s land forces to 100,000 by the decade’s end.
