With Pakistan continuing to back terrorist infrastructure from its soil despite global pressure, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said here on Tuesday international money laundering watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) can anytime blacklist the neighbouring country for terror financing.
The Asia Pacific Group of Paris based FATF had in August put Pakistan in a terror 'blacklist' for its failure to curb funnelling of funds to groups responsible for attacks in India. In this backdrop, Singh said "International agency FATF can blacklist Pakistan for terror financing," at the Defence Accounts Department Day event. The next meeting of FATF is likely to be held later this month where a decision on Pakistan is on the anvil.
The international watch dog is an inter-Governmental body that promotes effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the international financial system.
Singh observed that national security has become a multi-dimensional concept, economic, strength, food and energy security and environmental protection are its key aspects. It is prudent for an emerging economy like India to have good financial management, Singh said.
However, "Our neighbour is a living example of financial mismanagement," he said adding excessive militarisation and focus on wrong policies without financial prudence have resulted in a situation that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was not able to make arrangements for a flight to attend a global event.
The Defence Minister was apparently referring to Khan taking a commercial aircraft when a special jet given to him by the Saudi Arabian Government developed a technical glitch minutes after taking off from New York airport last week. Khan, who was to return to Pakistan following his seven-day trip to the US to attend the 74th session of United Nations General Assembly, had to return to New York after the plane developed a technical snag minutes after taking off from the Kennedy International Airport.
As regards the Indian defence outlay, Singh said the defence budget for 2019-20 is nearly 4.5 lakh crore, which is nearly 2.3 per cent of India's Gross domestic products (GDP). He said the Defence Accounts Department (DAD)takes care of the pensions of 31 lakh pensioners. SIngh lauded the DAD for implementation of One Rank, One Pension (OROP) professionally. To help pensioners, a call centre has also been established and the 19 'defence pension courts' organised in 2018-19 have yielded success, the Defence minister said.