Congo’s budget goes mainly for arms spending

The Congo government is in an economic tight spot. Its eastern provinces which have lucrative mineral resources like gold, tin and coltan reserves are in the eastern provinces now controlled by the rebel M23 soldiers, supported by the Rwandans.

The main challenge for the Congo government is to feed the war machine, and the budget exercise is to equip the army and pay the soldiers’ salaries. This is turning out to be a financial burden because the rich provinces under rebel control also reduce the tax potential of the government.

It has been calculated that the tax revenue is expected to fall from 15.1 per cent to 12.5 per cent. And the military expenditure has gone up because of the war. The government had promised to double the salaries of soldiers and the police, costing $500 million in the year. The army counts 268,602 personnel, among whom 74,000 are in combat zone.

More than 36,000 are considered non-active, and 3,618 are retried soldiers waiting for $145 million unpaid benefits. Unnamed sources told Reuters that the salaries have not been paid. It is also reckoned that defence and security-related spending that was incurred in the first four months of the year was $1 billion. According to an unnamed military source, “The bulk of these funds are handled outside the formal budget framework. We don’t have full visibility either.” This pertains to just rise in the defence expenditure. It is estimated that the budget deficit would increase from 0.8 per cent to 1.2 per cent.

The economics of war is negative, to put in simple terms. Valuable money is spent in destructive armaments and precious lives of human beings as soldiers and as non-combatants is lost. There just does not seem to be an iota of regret and penitence in the minds and hearts of politicians and generals about the countless lives of people lost in meaningless wars.

The only people who seem to be thriving are the arms merchants and the countries that are hubs of arms manufacture. Ironically, Western lending agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) end up lending money for supporting these local conflicts.

It does not mean that if the IMF and WB do not give money, the wars would end. They would not. Politicians of countries at war with each other are going to fight them anyway, and they will buy the arms and create an underworld market of arms smugglers.

What is happening in Congo is indeed the fate of many countries in Africa, especially in West African countries like Burkina Faso, Male, where military governments are fighting armed rebels.

It is the civilians, young and old, and women who are caught in the crossfire. As normal life in cities, towns and villages is disturbed, people are forced to migrate to the neighbouring countries, where they are not welcome. Almost all countries in Africa are facing economic stress, and they cannot bear the burden of refugees.

There is also the new element of private armies for hire. In many of the western African countries, the presence of private armies like Wagner from Russia, for example, has become quite prominent. Earlier, the French had stationed their troops in some of these countries. But due to political fluctuations, the military rulers have asked French troops to leave, and they have been replaced by mercenaries of the Wagner type. Wars have become anarchic. It is not always the armies of one state fighting the armed forces of another. So, when the peace terms were worked out, there was the guarantee that the nation-states would keep the promise. But with the presence of militants and their nexus with the arms dealers, ending wars has become a big problem.