Sri Lanka Announces Plans To Downsize Military By Half

Colombo: While most of the powerful countries in the world are trying to strengthen their Military Cash-strapped Sri Lanka on Friday announced plans to reduce the current strength of its military to half by 2030.

The top officials said that they are subjected to build a technically and tactically sound and well-balanced defence force, amid criticism that military expenditure was more than the allocation for health care and education in the 2023 budget.

The Army’s strength is to be reduced to 100,000 by the year 2030, down from the current figure of 200,783. The strength would be limited to 135,000 by next year, the Defence Ministry said in a statement.

The overall aim of the strategic blueprint is to broach a technically and tactically sound and well-balanced defence force by the year 2030 in order to meet upcoming security challenges,” the statement quoting the state minister of defence Pramitha Bandara Tennakoon said.

The defence allocation of 539 billion rupees in the budget 2023 drew criticism as the island nation faced its worst economic crisis since 1948.

Due to the forex shortage, Sri Lanka was unable to afford key imports, including fuel, fertilisers and medicines, leading to serpentine queues. For health and education, the 2023 budget has allocated over 300 billion rupees each.