Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: Bankrupt Sri Lanka will drastically downsize its military, the country’s defense ministry said on Friday, as the government works to overhaul its chaotic finances after an unprecedented economic crisis.
The island nation is still spinning from months of food and fuel shortages that made daily life a misery for its 22 million people last year.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe has increased taxes and imposed harsh spending cuts to smooth the passage of a possible International Monetary Fund bailout after a government debt default.
Sri Lankan armed forces are next on the axing block, with the defense ministry saying that it would retire about 65,000 soldiers from its 200,000-strong army over the year.
The downsizing makes up the lion’s share of plans to cut Sri Lanka’s land forces to 100,000 by the end of the decade.
According to a ministry statement, the overall aim of the strategic blueprint is to broach a technically and tactically sound and well-balanced defense force.
Sri Lankan forces’ strength
Nearly 400,000 people worked in the military at its peak strength in 2009, the year government forces crushed the Tamil Tigers separatist movement during a no-holds-barred offensive resulting in thousands of civilian casualties.
Defense of the country accounted for nearly 10 percent of public spending in 2022 year, and according to experts, pay for security force personnel makes up about half the government’s salary bill.
Sri Lankan government warned this week the country had hardly enough revenue to pay public employees and pensions despite huge tax increases at the start of the year.
Meanwhile, the economy shrank an estimated 8.7 percent last year as the public endured lengthy blackouts, long queues for petrol, empty supermarket shelves, and runaway inflation.
The crisis reached to peak in July when protesters angered by the crisis stormed the official residence of the then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who promptly fled the country and tendered his resignation while overseas.
