Marginal budget increase for South Africa

The South African defence budget for 2006/07 is marginally up by 1.3 per cent, on the 2005's actual expenditure, but 5.5 percent up on the estimate for 2006. The overall trend will be an annual increase of 4.8 percent from 2003/04 to 2008/09 if capital equipment funding is included and 7.8 percent if it is not. Their is a 45.5 per cent increase in the special operations budget to ZAR228.6 million by 2008/09. The Special Defence Account, which covers capital acquisition costs and some special operational expenses, takes up 35.6 percent of the budget.