Military of Croatia - Budget

Budget

The Croatian military budget for the past 6–7 years was kept below 2% of GDP, a vast difference from the 1990s when defense expenditure represented a major stake in Croatian Budgetary expenditure due to the Croatian War of Independence. For example, 1995 Croatian defense budget stood at 12.4 billion Croatian Kuna or just over 12% of GDP, which was also the highest defense expenditure ever.

Defense Expenditures in recent years (example years - source Croatian MOD);

• 2000: 4.768 bln HRK - 3.13% of GDP
• 2001: 4.909 bln HRK - 3.01% of GDP
• 2002: 4.659 bln HRK - 2.64% of GDP
• 2003: 4.814 bln HRK - 2.54% of GDP
• 2004: 4.102 bln HRK - 2.00% of GDP
• 2005: 4.106 bln HRK - 1.87% of GDP
• 2006: 4.200 bln HRK - 1.67% of GDP
• 2007: 4.630 bln HRK - 1.69% of GDP
• 2008: 5.350 bln HRK - 1.79% of GDP
• 2009: 5.111 bln HRK - 1.52% of GDP
• 2010: 4.811 bln HRK - 1.45% of GDP
• 2011: 5.119 bln HRK - 1.47% of GDP
• 2012: 4.828 bln HRK - 1.45% of GDP (projected)

According to the 2006-2015 long-term defense plan the country's military expenditures were set to rise to 1.80% of GDP in 2008, to 1.85% in 2009 and finally to remain steady at 2.00% from 2010 onwards as suggested by NATO. However, due to the economic crisis, expenditures for 2009 were kept well bellow the envisaged level.

According to government's economic plans for the 2010-2012 period, Croatian military expenditures are to remain somewhere around 1.35-1.40%. This would have meant that Croatia would have spent the least amount of money on its armed forces in its own history. Because of this sharp fall, there was concern about postponements or even cancellation of many modernization projects.

Again, however, contrary to expectations, the military expenditure for 2011 was instead raised up to 4.96 billions kuna, +4.6% more than the previous year, slightly more of 1.5% of GDP.

It have also to be noted that the parallel completion of the planned process of military personnel downsizing, would hopefully allow a sensibly more efficient allocation of monetary resources.