The overall budgets of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the State Intelligence Service (SHISH) are published in the Law on Budget, which is adopted every year [1, 2].
The MoD did not provide information on the ratio of secret spending, [3] but according to the State Supreme Audit Institution (SSAI), the MoD has spent between 2% to 4.4% of their budget on classified procurements over the last three years (about 4.4% in 2015, about 2.1 % in 2016, and about 3.6 % in 2017) [4]. The State Intelligence Service spends around 30% of its annual budget on secret items [5].

The percentage of defence and security spending on secret items relating to national security and the intelligence service is not available to the public. The finance laws of the few last years only list total figures of the budget of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of the Interior, local authorities and territorial planning (1), (2), (3).

Research shows that there is little information on how the budget of the related ministries breaks down. No details on the spending of specific items have been made available. Also, international sources of security budgets, such as SIPRI (4) and the CIA World Factbook (5), only provide overall figures of security expenditure.

Various laws allow classifying information relating to the defence sector. The secrecy of the defence sector is defined on the one hand in the organic law on the information. Art. 84 says that professional journalists have the right to access information unless the information concerns national defence secrecy (6). On the other hand, Article 63, 66, and 67 of the Penal Code mentions that issues related to security are classified (7).

There is no publicly accessible information the budget for secret items relating to national security and the intelligence services

For instance, the 2018 State Budget Law stipulates that security-related public services integrated into the National Security System are subject to a special regime, funded by the Special Financial Security Funds that are under the sole control of the president (Art. 12) (1).

With respect to the budgets in the area of ​​intelligence, there is on the one hand an item that is known within the jurisdiction of defence and, on the other, a totally secret item that is of the Federal Intelligence Agency, the head of the system. The intelligence services in Argentina are composed of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI), the National Directorate of Criminal Intelligence (DINICRI) under the orbit of the Ministry of Security and the National Directorate of Strategic Military Intelligence (DINIEM), under the orbit of the Ministry of Defence. [1] [2] [3] [4]Although they are under different orbits, they maintain a functional relationship directly with the AFI, the head of the national intelligence system. In addition, there are intelligence agencies of the Armed Forces whose function is the strategic operational intelligence and tactical intelligence necessary for the planning and conduct of military operations and specific technical intelligence. In the disaggregated budget of the Ministry of Defence, defence services are identified as of the Ministry itself (within the Minister Unit) and of each Force (within the operational enlistment programme). The percentage reaches 1.6% of the total budget of the entire defense jurisdiction. [5] On the other hand, the government, by decree in May 2016, repealed the “fund management regime” and with it the regulations that existed on the publication of the funds of the intelligence system. [6] This therefore implies that Budgets for this area are not available. What is known is in total terms. In the 2019 budget, the Intelligence function grew by 7% in real terms. The AFI is the body that receives the most resources. In 2019 it received $2,697 million, 34% more than in 2018. [7] [8] The ICCSI questioned this decision and recalled that “the policy of transparently managing the funds of the agency in charge of national intelligence was a commitment assumed by the National State with the victims of the AMIA attack, as part of a friendly settlement before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.” [9]

Total expenditures for the defence sector in 2018 are publicly available; however, the percentage of budget expenditure on secret items concerning national security and intelligence services is not available. There is no detailed classification of expenditures [1]. The 2018 interactive budget only shows the allocation of expenditures for defence, military defence, external military aid, research and planning in defence [2].

Defence and security expenditure for all security and defence agencies for the past year – and requests for the coming years – is revealed in the relevant portfolio’s Portfolio Budget Statement (PBS). The 6 agencies that make up the Australian Intelligence Community each have separate budgets listed in a PBS or are subsidiary to a body with a published budget: Office of National Assessments [1], Australian Security Intelligence Organisation [2], Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) [3], Australian Signal Directorate [4, p17], Defence Intelligence Organisation ((subsidiary to defence) [4], and Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (subsidiary to defence) [4, p17]. However, the forward-looking Budget Papers which are released on Budget Night and outline additional spending for different programs which will be authorised by the Appropriation Bills often classify additional amounts appropriated for security and intelligence agencies (for example, classified additional funding amounts over 4 years for the ASIS in the 2017-18 Budget Papers [5]). Given that these amounts are secret, though they are usually less than $100 million (continuing on the previous example, the 2019-20 Foreign Affairs and Trade PBS revealed that ASIS ended up receiving an additional $56 million between financial years 2017-18 and 2018-19 [3, 6]), it is difficult to say what percentage of the defence and security budget they make up. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Cost of Defence reports include rough estimates of the budgets of security services, including secret items, formed by aggregating budget papers [6]. These estimates indicate that secret items form a small, likely low single-digit, percentage of overall defence and security expenditure.

The total amount allocated to national security and intelligence services is reflected in the state budget of Azerbaijan. For example, in the 2018 budget, 111,658,826 manats were allocated in the “National Security” section. Its 92,123,771 manats were allocated to the State Security Service and 19,535,055 manats to the Foreign Intelligence Service (1).
The percentage of defence and security expenditure in the budget year dedicating to spending on secret items relating to national security and the intelligence services is not available to the public. At the same time, funds allocated for intelligence services within military structures are within the budget for those structures. For example, information on the allocation of budget for the Defence Ministry’s intelligence office is unavailable (2).

The king has the power to approve the massive amount of money for the defence sector. The minister also has some power to purchase secret items, but in general, no data is available on how much [1, 2, 3]. Extensive searches online and offline revealed that there is no available data on this subject.

Bangladesh’s budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year included a 6.13% (USD 4.1 billion) allocation for defence and a 4% (USD 2.67 billion) allocation for public security [1]. It is difficult to judiciously ascertain the exact percentage of the defence budget used to purchase secret items for military intelligence agencies. Although the official budget provides allocations by agency, the name ‘Directorate General of Forces Intelligence’ is clearly missing [2].

The annual budget includes the budget of “State Security” – VSSE (under the department of Justice). Furthermore, the annual budget also reports about the budget spent on wiretapping of private and digital communications [1]. The budget of the military intelligence service, the SGRS, is not disclosed. It is included within the defence budget, but impossible to know its size. Committee I does have access to this information, so in that sense there is parliamentary oversight. As confirmed by another source, this information is not publicly available [2, 3].

The budgets of the defence and security sector (including Intelligence and Security Agency of BiH) on the state level are publicly available.
The budget breakdown shows funds that are to be used for procurement; however, they do not specify the procurements to be made (except for categorization of purchase of land, buildings, equipment, other fixed assets, reconstruction and up keeping) [1].
Article 93 of the Law on Intelligence and Security Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina states the planning and submission of expenditure reports to the Agency shall be conducted in a manner that protects the intelligence operations, sources, methods and operational measures of the Agency [2]. There are no planned acquisitions of secret items in the 2018 Budget of the Ministry of Defence [3]. There is also no specific information in the 2018 budget for the Ministry of Security related to the acquisition of secret items. The planned budget for the secret service is not publicly available [3, 4].

According to the government reviewer, there are no procurements of goods and services that are exempted from the Law on Public Procurement (Article 10) and classified in accordance with the Law on Protection of Classified Information. The MoD has issued a Procurement Instruction that was exempted from the JN Law in September 2018, but did not apply in 2019. So the area is completely regulated by law and by-laws.

For the 2020/2021 Recurrent Budget, the Ministry of Defence, Justice and Security received P8.56 billion (approximately USD 800 million) [1]. Of this amount, the percentage that will go to the intelligence and security services (known as DIS) has not been published. Historically, the budget for DIS has been mired in controversy [1]. For example, in 2017, it was reported that, Parliament was caught between a rock and a hard place when the Finance and Economic Development Ministry brought an urgent request for approval of an additional P726 million for supplementary expenditure [2]. Under the Financial Paper Number 3 of 2016/17, which contains Supplementary Estimates of Expenditure from the consolidated fund pertaining to eight ministries, Nonofo Molefhi, who was standing in for the substantive Finance Minister, requested amongst others, P5.5 million for over spending by the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DISS) [2]. Secret items are not part of the budget. The arrest of the former DISS Boss, Isaac Kgosi, being charged inter alia corruption in the secret purchasing of various secret items of the DISS.

Less then 1% of the Brazilian budget is secret, according to Portal da Transparência. All budgetary items that are approved as secret by the legislature receive the code “2866 – Ações de Caráter Sigiloso,” and the values and institutions that have secret budgets are also available online [1].

The percentage of defence and security expenditure dedicated to spending on secret items related to national security and intelligence is not available publicly. There is no information about military spending on secret items in the reports of the Supreme Audit Institution or the Court of Accounts. According to the 2018 BTI report, Burkina Faso’s military expenditures for the past three years were 1.2% of the GDP in 2016; 1.3% in 2015; and 1.4% of the GDP in 2014 (1). The 2000-2018 Trading Economics Burkina Faso Corruption Ranking indicates that “Burkina Faso[‘s] military expenditure is 185.60 USD Million,” it does not report spending on secret items related to defence and security as well as the intelligence (2). The Open Budget Survey report (2018) states that “since 2015 Burkina Faso has decreased the availability of budget information by: Producing the In-Year Report for internal use only; Failing to produce the Mid-Year Review’. The report further says that the country has “failed in making progress by: Not making the Citizens Budget available to the public in a timely manner; Publishing an Executive’s Budget Proposal that only contains minimal budget information” (3).

There is no evidence that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), has recorded the percentage of defence and security expenditure dedicated to spending on secret items either. However, the 2018 SIPRI report states that there has been a 24% increase in Burkina Faso’s military expenditure from 2016 to 2017, which is about $191 million (4).

The budget for the secret services is a sub-budget of the Ministry of Defence. Details of the different needs of the intelligence services are not clearly stated in this budget. There are no details on how the budget will be spent and the expenditures carried out are considered state secrets that are not revealed to the public [1]. The 2017 financial budget did provide information on security spending relating to national security and the intelligence services, but the percentage of defence and security expenditure in the budget year that is dedicated to spending on secret items relating to national security and the intelligence services is not available to the public [1] [2].

The Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (SOF), JTF-2, is almost unmentioned in government publications. Its unit page, unlike others, does not specify unit size, command structure, commander, location, or budget. [1] The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) does not publish its budget in reports. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) had a budget of $538 million in 2016, the last year it published numbers. [2] [4] A 2017 study on intelligence oversight among Five Eyes nations reported that the budget of the CSIS was $577 million. The same report pointed out that the RCMP (total budget $6.3 billion) engages in some secret activities related to national security. [3] The Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM) also carries out secret activities, but the budget supporting this is not published. Since published budgets are generally highly aggregated, it is impossible to determine what percentage of spending goes to secret items. However, it should be noted that the CSIS, CSE, and RCMP are funded through the Department of Public Safety and not the Department of National Defence.

The budget for national defence has two components that are treated differently. On the one hand, resources that belong to the Annual Budget Law of the Public Sector are used for operational expenditures, and they are destined to specific items approved by Congress in the annual public budget. Resources that fall under the Restricted Law of Copper (Ley Num. 13.196) are used for investment and maintenance of war potential [1, 2]. These last expenditures, associated with the purchasing of weapons, have a reserved character. Aggregated numbers of resources from the Restricted Law of Copper authorise, for 2016, around US$ 389 million for maintenance of war potential, investments, and others [3]. The Public Budget Proposal for the year 2020 included, as items of “reserved expenditures” of the Law 19.863, the following amounts (in thousands): $1.482.294 and US$ 2.213, for the army; $177.530 and US$549, for the navy; and $247.701 and US$800, for the air force. It must be considered that, in September 2019, a new legislation (Ley Num. 21.174) replaced the Restricted Law of Copper (Ley Num. 13.196). However, the transition toward the mechanism of finance of the military capacities, which began in 2020, will be implemented gradually, for twelve years. The legislation established that a tax of ten per cent (10%) would subsist for nine years, decreasing from year ten by two-point-five per cent (2.5%) per year to zero per cent (0%) in year twelve, the year in which a more accurate calculation of the budget for secret items would be possible [4, 5, 6, 7].

Information on secret items spending is not publicly available nor can an estimate be easily offered. [5,6] The published defence budget includes only three categories – personnel, training and maintenance, and equipment – and there is no reference to secret items. [3,4] It is not possible to offer an estimate based on the information available on the PLA procurement websites [1,2] as most items of weaponry procurement are listed as classified and do not provide public information on budgets.

The General Budget of the Nation, which establishes budget items for the different sectors including the defence sector and state entities annually, is publicly known and consultation is possible for the different government entities. [1] The National Intelligence Directorate (DNI), which is responsible for State intelligence and counterintelligence, has published its budgets yearly online. For 2019 the DNI was allocated a budget of 96.49 billion pesos, of which 92.5% corresponds to operational costs and 7.5% to investment. The budget is divided into personnel expenses, acquisitions of goods and services, and expenses for taxes, fines, sanctions and default interest, but does not go into the budget detail of each. The value assigned to the DNI for the fiscal period 2019 represents 1% or less of the expenditure devoted to secret items in relation to the total national budget which was 259 trillion pesos for the fiscal period 2019. [2]

The precise percentage of defence and security expenditure allocated each year to secret items related to national security or the intelligence services is not disclosed. A new intelligence service was created around the Coordination Nationale du Renseignement (CNR) on 18 October 2012 via Decree No. 2012-1016 (Décret n° 2012-1016, Portant création, missions et organisation de la Coordination nationale du Renseignement, en abrégé CNR). The CNR is directly attached to the Executive and is headed by the President’s brother, Birahima Téné Ouattara. All CNR activities, including the annual allocations from the Budget Law for intelligence services, is considered top secret. On the official website of President Ouattara, the CNR appears under the subheading “Les Affaires Présidentielles”, and appears to be only accountable to the minister of presidential affairs and the Directeur de Cabinet, a powerful position within the government hierarchy (1).

In general, annual allocations to the defence budget are provided only in highly aggregate form with no detailed breakdown of costs. For example, the draft Budget Law for 2018, published in October 2017, provides the planned expenditure across broad functions. Table 5 (p. 17) shows the key spending elements of defence: Defence & Security: 516.8 billion FCFA, of which CFA 252.8 billion are projected for the Armed Forces (services des armées), 174.3 billion FCFA allocated to the police forces and 79.3 billion CFA to the Gendarmerie Nationale (2). The draft Budget Law for 2018 also indicates the level of projected expenditure for fuel destined to the armed forces (13.8 billion FCFA), operational costs at the Conseil National de Sécurité (CNS) (10 billion FCFA) and a global figure of 617.9 billion FCFA across other functions. Finally, it makes mention of the LPM (p. 14) (2).

The annual financial appropriation of the Danish Defence Intelligence Service is published on the DDIS website, the Ministry of Defence website and in the Finance Act (§12.25) [1, 2, 3]. In 2019, the appropriation was c. 955 million DKK out of a total defence budget of c. 23,5 billion DKK. Thus, c. 4% of the total defence budget is used on the DDIS. The calculated percentage is disclosed to the public on the Ministry of Defence website [3]. The DDIS budget is disaggregated.

The financial records of secret items are not included in the budget (1), (2), (3). According to a recent interview with the deputy minister (MoD) for financial affairs, Egypt’s military budget forms only 5% of the total budget (4). According to the FY15/16 national budget, 99.3% (EGP 42.9 billion out of the EGP 43.2 total budget) of the Defence and National Security expenditure is classified under “other expenses” (5), which is the translation of armed forces budget being presented in the budget as a single (topline) figure, as stated by Article 204 of the Constitution (6).

Nearly 45 million euros of “other operating expenses” were marked as state secret in the defence budget for 2019 [1]. In comparison, “other operating expenses” cost nearly 38 million euros. [2] The overall expenditures in the same year are expected to be 501 million euros. Therefore, 9 per cent of the budget’s expenses are made secret. This percentage has tripled within the past three years. In 2016 the expenditures marked as “state secret” amounted to 3.7 per cent. According to a member of the National Defence Committee, “some dozens of millions are allocated to the foreign intelligence”, but exactly on what is unknown. [3]

The state budget and financial statement provide figures for operational expenses separately for (1) the Ministry of Defence, (2) Military Defence, (3) Military Crisis Management, (4) Policing (the Ministry of the Interior), and (5) Crisis Management (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Further details are not provided, excluding the budget of Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (under the Ministry of the Interior and included in policing). [1] The organisation structure, budget and the number of personnel of defence intelligence are classified information. [2]

“Special funds” are secret funds, “dedicated to the financing of various actions related to the external and internal security of the State”, allocated to the services of the Prime Minister. These funds don’t need to be accounted for. They amounted to 67.2 million euros in the Finance Law of 2018. [1]
The Defence budget was 34.2 billion euros in 2018, [2] making special funds 0.2% of that budget.
The Interior Security Forces (within the Ministry of the Interior) budget was 12.7 billion euros in 2018, [3] making special funds 0.5% of this amount.
Special funds represent 0.1% of the total of the Interior Security Forces and Defence (exterior security) budgets.

The ‘closed budget’ for the ‘Military Counterintelligence Service’ (‘Militärischer Abschirmdienst’) amounts to EUR 9,014,000 in the current fiscal year 2020. This information can be found in Einzelplan 14 [1]. The percentage of security and defence expenditure dedicated to secret budget items (national security & intelligence) is unknown [2].

The percentage is not available to the public or the legislature (1), (2), (3).

In the budget year 2021 the percentage of defence and security expenditure dedicated to spending on secret items is less that 1% (Hellenic Navy: 200.000€ in a budget of 526.530.000€, Ministry of Defence: 6.140.000€ in a budget of 5.442.934.000€).
This information may be obtained from detailed MoD decision on budget appropriation, using budget lines and appropriate codification according to the Governmental Classification of Income and Expenses. The detailed defence budget is being published annually on public data website Di@vgeia [1,2].

Before 2017 the share of secret items was minimal, less than one per cent [1]. However, there’s subsequently been a turning point in terms of secret items, parallel to the ongoing radical increase of the defence budget.[2, 3, 4, 5]. It is highly likely that the share of secret items is likely to grow radically in the coming years. It is important to note that the recent percentage is not available to the public. The detailed description of recent defence budget does not contain any information about it [6].

As stated in Q.12, no stand-alone comprehensive defence budget document exists in the public domain. Secret items are not listed in any documents that are available. At times, media reports publish budget outlay figures of some of the intelligence agencies such as the CBI and the IB [1][2]. The percentage of secret items cannot be ascertained. According to an expert, given the magnitude of India’s defence and security expenditure, the percentage share of intelligence agencies would not exceed 3%.

This indicator is marked ‘Not Enough Information’ because it is not possible to calculate this percentage.

In principle, there are no secret items because all programmes and activities are recorded in the state budget and there are no non-budgetary funds, as there have been in the past [1]. Nevertheless, when it comes to budgets related to operations (such as intelligence), the amount is known but not the details of how they are used. This not only applies to intelligence and national security, but across all government budgets. If we define secret items as spending on intelligence, it is hard to pin down the figure. BIN, as an intelligence coordinator, is not authorised by law to pool all intelligence budget under its management. As a result, intelligence spending is distributed between the TNI Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS), the National Police Security Intelligence Agency (Baintelkam), the Prosecutor’s Intelligence and other intelligence-related ministries/agencies. In order to calculate overall intelligence spending, we need to access the strategic plans that are issued every year by all relevant ministries/agencies [2,3,4,5,6]. Unfortunately, not all strategic plans are publicly available for this purpose.

The percentage is not available to the public. No detailed information on expenses and procurement is provided in the budget [1, 2]. Only summary figures attributed to each organisation are given [1, 2].

While the new federal budget for 2018 breaks down major costs and allocations relating to national security, secret items are not included (1), (2). Similarly, the draft law proposed for the fiscal year of 2019 does not disclose the percentage of the budget dedicated to ‘secret items relating to national security and intelligence” (3). Information of such a sensitive nature is not publicly disclosed or discussed within the public domain.

From interviews we made with former generals in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) (1), they said this information is classified and they can’t say what percentage is dedicated to spending on secret items related to national security and intelligence services. However there are several estimates that the budget grew dramatically in the past few years and now is around 10% of the defence budget (2).

Expenses of “reserved nature” are provided for by the annual ministerial decree approved by the annual budget law, as regulated by art. 553 of the Code of the Military System [1]. Details of the Ministry expenditures are available in the provisional state of expenses. For the year 2020 the expenses of “reserved nature”, line 1120, amount to almost 1.4 million euros, that is less than one per cent of the entire budget devoted to the Ministry [2].

It should be noted that, even if it is possible to assess the percentage of the defence budget to spending on secret items, it is not possible to assess the allocation of the item.

A detailed breakdown of the annual budgets of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is found on their websites. Secret items that are used by the national security and the intelligence services are included in the section “compensation” (報償費). The section “compensation” will, however, include some other expenses as well. [1] This shows that for fiscal year 2019, the amount of 27,200,000 yen has been allocated for “compensation” for the MOD. This is far below one percent of the budget for the MOD. [2] In the annual budget for fiscal year 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs appropriated 1,650,000,000 yen for intelligence activities under the auspices of its overseas establishments and 900,000,000 yen for those under the auspices of the Ministry in Japan. [3] 1,461,652,000 yen has been allocated in the 2019 fiscal budget year for the Secret Funds in the Cabinet Secretariat (内閣官房報償費). [4] The total expenditure for FY 2019 listed in the cited budgets was 5,257,439,983,000 yen for the MOD, 150,115,659,000 yen for the overseas establishments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 580,505,912,000 yen for MOFA’s home ministry in Japan and 111,818,789,000 for the Cabinet Secretariat. The “compensation expenses” (報償費) listed in these budgets make up 0,0005%, 1,1 %, 0,2 % and 1,3 % of the total expenditures of the budgets, respectively. The sum of the “compensation expenses” (報償費) for these four institutions would be much smaller than the grand total of their expenditures, given the large size of the budget of the MOD. Furthermore, not all of the funds spent on “compensation expenses” are spent on items that relate to national security and the intelligence services. Following a Supreme Court ruling on November 20, 2018, some information on the use of the Cabinet Secretariat’s Compensation Fund by three Chief Cabinet Secretaries in the 2000s and 2010s was declassified. This fund is managed by the Chief Cabinet Secretary, and the Board of Audit receives reports on its use. Declassification revealed that the money is used for three purposes: policy promotion, compensation for providing information, and giving of gifts in exchange for information collection. The court ordered declassification of information on the first category only. This represents 90% of the spending of the fund. However, receipts are not required for this category, and much is still not clear about what this money was used for. On average, the Chief Cabinet Secretaries spent about 100 million yen of the fund per month. [5]

There is a secret defence budget, which mostly comes from the businesses owned by the armed forces, foreign donations or from other sources [1,2]. However, there is no data about that, not even for officers in the army or the intelligence. Defence budgets available to the public are generally obscure, and the most detailed one appears as forecasted expenses in the General Budget Law for Fiscal Year 2018 [3]. In the 2017 annual financial accounts of the Ministry of Finance, there is no mention of defence or military expenditures at all [4]. However, in the 2016 report, a very small section was provided for military expenses which include general figures for the expenditures of the armed forces, the royal military services, public security directorate, civil defence and the gendarme forces [5]. General figures demonstrate that most of the defence expenditure is in fact secretive and its breakdown is not available to the public. The percentage of allowed secret spending is not available to the public, nor is any level of details for defence budgets.

Information on Kenya’s military expenditure is accessible through the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an independent resource on global security. Reports on expenditure, however, do not include any information about the acquisition of secret items relating to national security and the intelligence services. [1] Lack of access to such information by the public can be attributed to the confidentiality clauses on issues related to national security as stipulated in Section 90 (2) of the Public Procurement and Assets Disposal Act. [2]

This section states that national security organs that deal with procurement and disposal of classified items shall carry out all procurement and disposal activities by maintaining a dual list. New provisions of the The Public Procurement and Assets Disposal Act (PPADA), 2020 have repealed this. [3]

Section VIII of PPADA Act outlines regulations for procurement of classified items which national security institutions like the defence sector handles. This includes requiring that national security institutions publish a list of classified items and get prior approval from Cabinet and approval from relevant authorities. Any transactions that are done outside this approved list are deemed according to section VIII sub-section 84 (6) to be conducting procurement and disposal procedures on the basis of an open list.

The budget is published annually and is publicly available for all Kosovo institutions, including defence and security-related institutions in Kosovo. However, there are no provisions within the budget for items confidential to national security and the intelligence services [1].

More than eight percent of the budgets of security and defence agencies are spent on unknown projects, the state budget breakdowns show. In 2017/2018, about 50 percent of the military expenditure and 15 percent of the expenditure of the police and the KNG went to unknown assets and services, according to the final report of the Finance Ministry (1). These funds were not explicitly said to have gone to secret projects, but they were distributed among vaguely described categories like “products and services” and “expenses and other transactions,” upon which no further information is available.

Year 2016/2017 produced similar results (2), but in 2015/2016, 96 percent of the military’s was went to poorly described categories like “needed sales and services” (3). No explanations were asked for or given.

According to the description of the sub-indicator, it is stated that if spending on secret items is beyond 3% or less then the score is 3. According to data provided by the MOD in 2020 it will reach 3%. Even if this information is not available on the website, there are no difficulties in obtaining information from the MOD. [1]

Less than one per cent of the defence budget is allocated to spendings on secret items. According to the 2018 State Budget Law published on the Ministry of Finance’s website, secret items spending costs 18,000,000,000 (divided by 1,507.50 = $11,940,298.50) (1) which is 0.66%, less than one per cent of the total stated draft defence budget out of which around 20% is spent on the LAF motor pool and other running costs (2).

51 percent of defence and security expenditure in 2018 was either “confidential”, “restricted” or “secret” [1], compared to 47 percent in 2017 [2]. The value of this procurement is not disclosed.

There are several intelligence agencies that are related to defence and security. Their functions may overlap. The military has the National Defence Intelligence Centre (BSPP); the Royal Police of Malaysia (RPM) has the Special Branch which has 12 departments; and there are the National Security Council (MKN) and the Research department of the Prime Minister’s Office. [1] The information on intelligence budgets is never published and is not for public consumption. But there have been reports that budgets for intelligence have been used for political purposes by the ruling government. [2] [3] [4] [5]

The size of the budget allocated to the intelligence services is not publicly known. Mali’s intelligence service, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité d’Etat (DGSE), does not have a website. The budget of the armed and security forces does not include the intelligence service or make any reference to items kept secret for reasons of national security. The 2018 budget contains a breakdown of defence spending into various categories: personnel, materials and functioning, travel and operations, communications and energy, other expenses, equipment and investment, transfers and subventions. But there is no mention of the resources invested in the DGSE. Indeed, there have been no mentions of intelligence spending in recent annual budgets or defence plans.² ³ ⁴ Furthermore, there is no standing parliamentary committee vested with any responsibility or power for overseeing DGSE operations, organisation, budget or activities.⁵
Substantial amounts of defence spending are not detailed in the budget as many things can be financed through the numerous sources of off-budget defence income, as outlined in the SIPRI report from 2006.¹ The report also states that the official budget of the armed and security forces (as it appears in the annual Finance Act) is only a fraction of the economic resources dedicated to military activities in Mali.

Official information indicates that in 2017 and 2018, 0.07% of the Federation’s Expenditure Budget was allocated to Intelligence expenses in order to preserve National Security. [1]

It is important to mention that in April 2019, the Chamber of Deputies approved a decree that eliminates the secret items in the Federation’s Expenditure Budget. [2] Supporters of this reform point out that such a change implies shielding the spending budget, since for many years it has been a budget used at the discretion of the presidents, including for their own enrichment. On the other hand, specialists on the subject indicate that while this elimination is an important step towards accountability, they believe that there are still ways to exercise spending on a discretionary basis. [3]

The Ministry claims that 2% of the budget is dedicated to spending on secret items. [1] However, information about those expenditures is not available even in aggregated form. [2] According to the MOD, Article 116b of the Public Procurement Law allows to develop the Plan for procurement of items exempted from the Public Procurement Law. In 2018 the amount of ca. 700.000,00 euros was allocated for the exemptions, which makes ca1,5% of the overall Defence Budget.

In a number of cases, information relating to public procurements by the Ministry is claimed to be secret and tenders are published without basic information. [3] The State Audit Institution conducted two audits of the intelligence services and on both occasions underlined irregularities relating to secret procurements. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

The percentage of defence and security expenditure throughout the budget year dedicated to spending on secret items relating to national security and the intelligence services is not disclosed to the public (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)

This percentage is not available to the public. The defence budget for each fiscal year is proposed to the Union Parliament. The defence budget proposed by the Ministry of Defence for the 2019-2020 fiscal year is 3,370.778 billion kyats and the overall budget is broken down as follows: 1,433.240 billion kyats for capital expenditure, 1,937.538 kyats for revenue expenditure and 47 billion kyats for revenue income [1,2]. It does not include expenditure on secret items relating to national security and the intelligence services. It is therefore not possible to estimate this percentage.

Just over 15 million euros (0.13%) of the 11.6-billion-euro defence budget is secret expenditure [1]. Secret expenditure is clearly labelled in the budget.

There are no secret budgets, however details of individualised spending is secret.

Vote Security Intelligence and Vote Communications Security and Intelligence are classified, though the former’s 2019/20 appropriations and capital injections budget were $106,145 million, and $173,751 million for the latter (excluding supplementary estimates for both organisations) for a total of $279,896 million [1, 2, 3]. This does not prevent the regular auditing process from occurring, however [see answers to Qs 21 and 22]. Meanwhile, the Total Appropriations for Vote Defence Force ($4,291,152 million) and Vote Defence ($766,047 million) equated to $5,057,199 in 2019/20. [4] As concerns defence, that less than 1% of the Defence Force operating expenditure for the 2019/20 year was incurred in relation to secret items relating to national security. [7]
Thus the combined total of both Vote Security Intelligence and Vote Communications Security and Intelligence equates to just over 5.5% of the combined Defence and Security Budgets. However, if accounting for capital injection authorisations within Vote Defence Force ($975,358 million), then the percentage decreases to around 4.6%. [5] Detailed financial reporting, including categories or expenditure, is not provided in public reporting for the Security agencies. The total expenditure for the intelligence and security agencies is reported publicly [6].

The precise percentage of defence and security expenditure in the budget year dedicated to spending on secret items relating to national security and the intelligence services is not available to the public (1,2).

According to State Budget 2018 (3), Article 44, budgetary resources allocated to the Ministry of Defence are as follows (FCFA):
Administration of national defence policy: 54 170 331 550
Securing the territory: 72 589 000 000
Consolidation of peace: 861 200 000

According to SIPRI (4), Niger’s defence expenditure (in constant USD) in recent years was as follows:
2013: 88.6 million (1.4% of GDP)
2014: 122.8 million (1.8% of GDP)
2015: NA
2016: 166 million (2.2% of GDP)
2017: 198 million (2.7% of GDP)
Thus, a score of 0 is most appropriate here. It takes into consideration the secrecy of the information on the percentage of defence and security expenditure in the budget year dedicated to spending on secret items.

The actual percentage figure is difficult to ascertain as the line by line budget items are not sufficiently disaggregated to enable such an examination to be made (1). The executive has access to various pools of funds, which are classified as “special intervention funds”. The precise source of these funds and their amounts are not clear in the budget. They disappear and sometimes reappear under different headings (2).

The Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Interior budgets are not transparent when it comes to spending on secret items. The defence and security expenditure in the budget year dedicated to spending on secret items relating to national security and intelligence services are handled in accordance with the Law for public procurement, Articles 6 and 7 (1) and the Law of classified information, Articles 6 – 20 (2). The former proscribes disclosure of information vital to the national interests of the country; the latter determines the level of protection of the information referring to: public security; defence; foreign affairs; security, intelligence and counter intelligence activities etc. In practice, the 2018 MoD budget does not specify expenses for secret operations nor the MoD plans for public procurement of secret items spending (3). The 2018 MoI budget is also vague in relation to secret spending and only discloses amounts for “state security” spending (41 250 MKD) (4). The state budget, on the other hand, only discloses the overall budget of the Intelligence Agency (223 000 MKD) (5).
The MoD provided notes that the percentage of defence and security expenditure to secret items relating to national security and intelligence at the Ministry (procurement under Article 6 and 7) was 4.6% for 2018 (6).
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Spending on secret items in the State Budget relates to 3 services: the Norwegian Intelligence Service, the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) and the National Security Authority (NSM). The State Budget for 2020 allots them a total of approximately 3.5 billion NOK out of defence expenditure of 61 billion NOK together with justice expenditure of 42.5 billion NOK [1, 2]. Secret spending comes out of both budgets. Only the Norwegian Intelligence Service with a budget of 2.2 billion NOK is administratively governed and funded by the Ministry of Defence. Since May 2019 the National Security Authority (NSM) with a budget of 0.4 billion NOK has been moved under the authority of the Ministry of Justice and the Public Control. NSM reports to Ministry of Justice and Public Security (civil sector) and Ministry of Defence (military sector). 2.2 billion NOK of intelligence expenditure constitutes approximately 3.5 % of the defence budget.

There is no information about the military budget, as it is decided in the sultanic office. Additionally, the secret items and secret budgets are managed by the sultan’s office (1), (2). No details on the defence budget breakdown are publicly available on either the Ministry of Defence or Ministry of Finance websites (3), (4). No percentage is available to the public regarding spending on secret items. Moreover, Oman’s intelligence service, the Internal Security Service, falls directly under the Royal Office, and thus no evidence suggests their budget falls under defence (3). No estimations are plausible given that only the overall defence budget is published annually.

The percentage of secret items is not available to the public, or the information that is published is considered unreliable, as it provides a general overview of data, stating, for example, that 30% of the general budget goes to the military/security agencies (PA budget). Other details may include costs of petroleum and vehicles. As the intelligence force remains directly linked to the PA president and his office, it is not possible to know how much of the funds and budgets are dedicated to that security service, let alone the secret budgets (1), (2).

Under the GAA 2020, the budget item “intelligence expenses” accounts for less than 1% of total expenditure [1]. In the 2021 budget, the total defence appropriations is P205.47 billion (approximately $4.2 billion) and from that amount, P1.86 billion (approximately $38 million) is allocated for confidential and intelligence expenses. This is less than one percent of the defence expenditure [2].

The “secret items” in these calculations relate to classified budgets items rather than to classified procurements or expenses. The budgets of all intelligence and security agencies are included in the state budget law with similar precision, like the other ministries and agencies. The overall sum is divided into current expenditures and investments [1]. The MoD budgetary decision, implementing the state budget for the defence sector, which is publicly available on the MoD website, gives a more detailed overview of planned spending, which are divided into so-called budget paragraphs, as wages, acquisition of civilian equipment, food, medicine, arms and military equipment, energy, medical services etc. It includes the expenditures of military intelligence, counterintelligence and special forces [2, 3, 4].
The budgets of 3 civilian security agencies constitute a total of PLN 1018 million / EUR 236,7 million: the Intelligence Agency – PLN 188.5 million (EUR 43.8 million), Internal Security Agency – PLN 632 million (EUR 147 million) and Central Anticorruption Bureau – PLN 197.5 million (EUR 45.9 million). The budget for defence and security equals 48 293 million PLN (Act on the State Budget for 2018, supplement 2, page 1): 33 299 million (National Defence, chapter 752) + 14 994 million (Public Security and Fire Protection, chapter 754). The resulting ratio is two per cent.

Military intelligence in Portugal centers around the Centro de Informações e Segurança Militares (CISMIL) (Military Information and Security Center), which depends on the Joint Chief of Staff [1, 2]. Civil intelligence is split into the Serviço de Informações e Segurança (SIS) (Security and Intelligence Service) and the Serviço de Informações Estratégicas de Defesa (SIED) (Strategic Defence Intelligence Service [3].

There is no publicly available information on CISMIL’s budget or any estimate of defence and security expenditure on intelligence operations. The agency does not conduct identifiable procurement. With regards to SIS, budget allocation is known [4], as is the case of SIED [5]. Concerning the former, the 2020 budget allocates €13,496,515, of which €1,117,356 is bracketed under aggregate “diverse expenditure”; with regards to the latter, the budget allocates €8,376,612, of which €2,040,258 are also bracketed under aggregate “diverse expenditure”. However, these fall under the Presidência do Conselho de Ministros – Cabinet Presidency – budget.

Qatar defence budgets are not available to the public, and the budgets of other governmental departments lack detail. It can be argued that defence budgets are secret. The overall budgets of the defence sector, including the intelligence, are not available. There is no known percentage in the budget year for secretive expenditures. As one source stated, “All the budget is secretive”(1,2).

The percentage of secret parts in the budget is regularly very high and ‘violates Article 5 of Federal Law No. 5485-1 “On State Secrets”‘, according to an analysis by RANEPA and the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy (see page 31 of the ‘Conclusion of Federal Budget project’) [1]. The percentage of secret parts of the defence budget from 2016 to 2018 was 70.5%, 63.9%, and 66% respectively (see page 31 of the Conclusion of Federal Budget project’) [1]. The percentage of secret parts of the classified budget for national security and law enforcement was 29.1%, 29.45% and 35.1%.

In December 2017, the Saudi Ministry of Finance for the first time provided limited details on defence spending, stating that the government would spend SAR 210.0 billion (USD 56.0 billion) on defence when it released the 2018 budget (1). Previously, annual reports published by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency provided only “top line” total information on the defence budget (2). However, there is no comprehensive breakdown of these figures, and it is not possible to ascertain what portion is allocated for spending on secret and national security items (1), (2).

Estimating percentage of defence and security expenditure dedicated on secret spending is not possible because even some types of expenditures which are not classified are not transparently shown in the Serbian budget and the institutions’ annual reports on spending. The amount assigned to the civilian security and intelligence service (Security-Information Agency, BIA) has since 2015 only been presented in Serbian national budget as a lump sum [1, 2, 3, 4]. The legislation now explicitly foresees that BIA’s budgeted expenditures are only shown in an aggregate form (total budget value) [5]. The overall value of capital investments is shown separately in the section presenting capital projects of all budgetary beneficiaries [6]. Hence, it is only possible to know the overall budget of this agency and the share of its budget dedicated to ʻcapital investmentsʼ, with all further information (e.g. how much is planned for salaries, procurement, etc.) withheld from the public.
The expenditures for the Military Intelligence Agency (MIA) and the Military Security Agency (MSA) belong to the MoD’s budget, but from 2014 on, they have not been specifically shown, not even as lump sums. Unlike for BIA, there is no legislative ground for this. Similarly, budgets of Defence Inspectorate and Defence University (which both have the same legal status within MoD as MIA and MSA) are not explicitly shown within the MoD’s budget. This notwithstanding, all three Serbian security and intelligence services carry out public procurement and do publish notifications on individual contracts, including contract values [7]. Therefore overall spending on public procurement can still be estimated. However, BIA did not want to disclose information about the value of its procurement in the field of defence and security at BCSP’s request, citing the abovementioned legislative provision as justification [8]. On the other hand, MoD has provided this information through free access to information mechanism [9]. The provided information indicates that both in 2016 and 2017 nearly 9% of total MoD’s expenditures (this includes expenditures of military security services) were realised for procurement in the field of defence and security [confidential procurement; according to Articles 127 and 128 of the Public Procurement Law; 10]. It ought to be noted that share of procurement in the field of defence and security exempt from the law (Article 128) fell from 7% of total MoD’s expenditure in 2016 to 3% in 2017 [11].

There is no public information on secret items relating to national security and intelligence services. The annual defence budget report is typically released in a highly aggregated manner [1].

This score is heavily skewed by the secret operating budget of the State Security Agency (SSA), which is funded by a transfer under the National Treasury ‘Secret Services’ subprogramme to the South African Secret Service account. The budget vote for this subprogramme lists only two sections: ‘Secret Services: Operations’ at ZAR4.2bn and ‘Secret Services: Machinery and equipment’ at ZAR440.4m [1, 2]. The only section of the defence budget that is similarly outside scrutiny is the ZAR357.9m allocated to ‘Sensitive projects’ in the Special Defence Account [3]. These combined make up just over 8% of the total budget allocated to defence and the intelligence services.

Although it is possible to access the overall budget of the Ministry of National Defence (MND) and the National Intelligence Service (NIS) through Open Fiscal Data, [1] the exact scale of intelligence budgets for both organisations have never been disclosed publicly.
In South Korea, there is a specific government budget item called a “special activity fund”, referring to expenses for investigating and gathering the information that requires a high level of confidentiality. [2] The special activity fund is allocated to the MND and NIS and exempts them from parliamentary reports. [3] The special activity fund that the MND spent in 2017 and 2018 was 186 billion won and 148 billion won respectively, according to the information that the media acquired through a public information request. However, the figure provides limited information as it does not cover the overall spending of special activity funds. It only includes special activity funds related to basic expenses and overseas dispatch of military forces. [4]
The entire budget of the NIS is regarded as “special activity funds”, and it has never been disaggregated by item. [5] Due to the nature of the NIS budget which is exempt from parliamentary scrutiny, there is evidence that it has been abused by top government officials. In July 2018, Former President Park Geun-hye, who was impeached after a massive political scandal, was sentenced to 8 more years in prison after being found guilty of causing loss of government funds worth about 30 billion won from the NIS. [6] [7]

This information would, under normal circumstances, be found in the Ministry’s audit reports. But audit reports of the Defence Ministry are generally not available to the public due to the opaque nature of the government. [1]

The most accurate figure on Spanish defence spending is from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). According to the SIPRI, in 2019 the Spanish military spending amounted to €15.340M, with the percentage of intelligence and reserved funds representing 1.9%.
Reserved funds in Spain are assigned by the General State Budget Law to four departments: the secret services of the National Intelligence Centre (Centro Nacional de Inteligencia) (CNI), the secretary of state for defence of the Ministry of Defence, and the Ministries of Interior and Foreign Affairs. In 2018, the CNI was within the Ministry of the Presidency, but in 2019 they were back in the budget of the Ministry of Defence. The 2018 budget for the CNI was €281.95M (€296M in 2019), including €19.8M of reserved funds (a constant figure since 2013) [3]. Apart from this, there were other reserved funds (it is unknown to what extent they relate to security and defence) in three ministries (same figures for 2018 and 2019): Defence (€500,000), Interior (€7.37M), and Foreign Affairs (€186,310). Reserved funds totalled €27.8M in both 20128 and 2019. Reserved funds and the CNI budget totalled €290M and €304M in 2018 and 2019 respectively [4, 5].

The Government of Sudan’s publicly declared defence and security expenditure is widely considered to be unreliable and a drastic underestimate of its actual spending. The U.S. Department of State’s 2018 Integrated Country Strategy for Sudan reads: ‘The GoS reports that it spends more than 20 percent of its budget on military and intelligence, but it is widely suspected to spend far more, possibly from 50 to 70 percent’ [1]. Similarly, a report by The Enough Project’s Suliman Baldo noted that, while the 2017 budget suggested that the security sector accounts for about 30% of Sudan’s total expenditure, ‘a detailed analysis of the 2017 budget figures by a leading Sudanese economist established that the actual allocation for the defence and security sector, including expenditure items allocated to the sector under different chapters of the budget, would total 75 percent’ [2]. Sudan expert Alex de Waal wrote in 2019 that ‘payment to actors in the security arena are estimated to have consumed about 60 percent of government spending in recent years’ [3].

The allocations for the National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA), the State Inspection for Defence Intelligence (SIUN), and the Defence Intelligence Court constitute 0,01995322% of the 2020 defence budget [1].

In the publicly available financial documents in 2018 and 2019, the budget for the intelligence service was slightly above 1% of the overall budget of the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS) [1]. However, the DDPS also hosts civilian agencies for civil protection, sports or topography. At the same time due to the conscription system, the defence budget does not reflect most of the salaries of the troops.

The confidential budget formed 6.3% of the overall defence budget in 2020. Of this allocation, 1.7 % of the budget was dedicated to the national security and the intelligence service. 4.6 % of the budgets relates to weapon acquisition, which will be opened after receiving the approval from the U.S. government.[1,3] The procurement of M1A2T Abrams tank is an example.

To account for the security and public accountability obligations, the government has been reducing the secret budgets under the principle of minimizing the scope of confidentiality and maximizing information openness (National Defense Report of 2009, page 143) [2]. The amount of confidential budget decreased from 1,022 billion of 2007 to 222 billion of 2020 (NT dollars). [2]

The overall budgets of the intelligence and security agencies are not publicly available. No information is provided in the detailed budget books published annually by the Ministry of Finance [1]. Hence, spending on secret items relating to national security and the intelligence services cannot be estimated from existing documents. One source indicated that “one per cent or less of expenditure is dedicated to secret items” [2]; however no evidence could be found to confirm this.

According to the Regulations of the Prime Minister Officer on the Public Secret Budget 2004, the secret budget is secretly allocated, requested and reported to the Prime Minister directly. This expenditure involves funds required for secret items or missions in the following areas: national security, prevention and suppression of illegal drugs, information and public economic, social and technological interests [1].

The data provided by the government’s Bureau of the Budget on the annual budget allocation for each ministry, including the Ministry of Defence, does not include the budget for secret items [2]. However, Preecha Suwantat, an expert in the field of public finance, estimated that between 2013-2015 the defence secret budgets amounted around 300 million baht each year [3]. In 2019, the expert updated the secret defence budget fiscal year 2020 after finding in an appendix document that it amounted to almost 500 million baht [4]. Assuming that the secret defence budget was around 400-500 million baht each year between 2016-2020, it could be suggested that less than 1% of expenditure is dedicated to secret matters in the defence sector (of 210-230 billion THB, which was the average amount of the Ministry’s budget in the same period of time) [2,5]. Still, while the percentage estimated by a finance expert outside the military might well be correct, the reality is that there is no publicly available official information on this.

There is very little publicly available data on Tunisia’s defence budget, and no information that touches upon secret items within the budget breakdown.

There are no secret items/budget lines in the Ministry of Defence budget. There are two secret budget items in the central budget: first, the MIT’s budget and second, the President’s covert (or secret) fund. So put simply, the entire MIT budget should be considered a secret item. Neither the MIT’s budget nor the president’s covert fund are publicly available and, for the past two years, they have not been open to legislative oversight or CoA audits. It should be noted that the defence budget is not published publicly.

Within the framework of Article 3 of the Public Financial Management and Control Act No. 5018 [1], the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) is one of the public administrations included in the scope of Law No. 2937 on State Intelligence Services and National Intelligence Organization with the powers and responsibilities granted by this law in the framework of the company. According to Act No. 5018, the CoA has a judicial obligation to conduct oversight of MIT expenses, but it cannot conduct performance oversight.

The sources of funding for the MIT in Turkey are listed below:

* The MIT’s own covert budget that has traditionally been disclosed. According to open sources, the Government delivered its budget for the 2020 fiscal year to parliament for approval in October 2019. The available online sources suggest that ‘The amount allocated to the MIT in the 2020 budget is TL 2 billion 182 million (USD 300 million) and TL 1.2 billion of this figure (around USD 200 million) was allocated to personnel expenses, meaning that MIT has around USD 100 million left over for operational purposes in the fiscal year of 2020’ [2]. This information is all that can be found on open sources about the MIT’s central government budget.

* The Presidential covert (secret) fund. According to reports, the secret fund of the presidential office is TL 14.1 billion (more than USD 2 billion) [3]. Please note that the President can spend this fund freely and, according to Interviewees 1 and 3, around 25-20% of this fund (around USD 400 million for the fiscal year of 2020) is spent on intelligence and goes directly to the MIT’s operations. For instance, the salaries of the Free Syrian Army fighters are paid from this secret fund by MIT officials, which was allocated around 50 million USD for 2020. At the budget discussions at parliament’s Planning and Budget Commission in October 2019, the Minister of Defence Hulusi Akar said that these payments are not being made from the Ministry of Defence budget and implied there was a secret fund for this [4].

* Interviewee 3 emphasised that some funds from the TSKGV would also be allocated to the MIT in case of emergency [5].

According to local media reports [1], a colossal sum of money has been set aside for the purchase of an unnamed item by the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF). The classified asset was billed at Shs 1.9Trillion. It was further reported that the Shs 1.94Trillion, was separate from the customary classified expenditure of Shs 225bn also planned for in the same financial year according to the Ministerial Policy Statement (2019/2020 budget) of the Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs (MoDVA). The 2018/2019 classified expenditure was Shs 640bn. The planned 2019/2020 total classified expenditure was Shs 2.2tn, higher than the whole 2018/2019 defence budget of Shs 1.97tn. The 2019/2020 Defence Budget stands at Shs 3.4tn, an increment of 58 per cent.

With an MoD budget of 59.42 bn. UAH in 2016 [1], the MOD public procurement (uniform, medical supply, food, etc.) amounted to 10.15 bn. UAH and classified procurement (ammunition, military equipment, etc.) – 8.39 bn. UAH. This makes 45% of all MOD procurements classified or 14.5% of the MOD budget classified (18% in 2017 and 19,6% in 2018) [2, 3].

The UAE defence budget that is made available to the public does not contain a breakdown of expenditures. The government announces its annual budget and provides a topline round figure on defence and the military budget that does not include a breakdown or any details about budget distribution. Business Monitor International (BMI) and Global Security state that the UAE’s annual defence expenditure stood at an average of $23.4 Billion per year and this is expected to increase to an average of $35 Billion over the forecasted period (1), (2), (3).

The total expenditure dedicated to the Single Intelligence Account (which represents the combined budgets of MI5, SIS, GCHQ) in 2019-2020 was £3,152,460,000 (Total Net Resource Outturn + Total Net Capital Outturn) [1]. The total defence spending in 2018-2019 amounted to £39.834 billion [2]. This means that 7.91% of defence and security expenditure is dedicated to the activities of the intelligence services.

Since 2010, annual intelligence spending has remained a relatively constant proportion of annual national defence spending, representing around 11% of the overall annual defence budget [1]. Intelligence spending is understood as the sum of two separate budget programmes, the National Intelligence Programme (NIP) and the Military Intelligence Programme (MIP) [2]. The NIP funds the CIA and strategic-level intelligence activities associated with the NSA, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). A programme is primarily a MIP if it funds an activity addressing tactical or operational requirements specific to the DoD [1]. MIP expenditure is therefore managed by the intelligence elements of the military services. For both the NIP and MIP, only the topline budget number is declassified. In FY 2020, the funding for the MIP was $23.1 billion and the funding for the NIP was $62.7 billion, representing 11.6% of the total Pentagon budget [3,4]. The NIP and MIP budgets do not represent the total US intelligence-related expenditure, as a number of other departments have intelligence-gathering functions, for example, the Homeland Security Intelligence Program [1].

Representative Welch introduced legislation in 2018 to force the President to disclose the topline annual budget request for each of the 16 agencies in the Intelligence Community [5]. However, the bill remains in the House Committee on the Budget [6].

The latest budget act was published in 2016 [1]; there has been no official information on the distribution of resources since 2016. Although a lack of information prevents a determination of specific percentages allocated to discretionary intelligence services, it is important to note that since 2013, and especially in recent years, unofficial information has confirmed that both the National Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) and the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) have received exponential increases in their allocations [2, 3]. More specifically, the SEBIN may have gone from receiving about 5.4 billion bolivares in 2016 [4] to 14 billion in 2017 [2, 3].

In accordance with the 2016 budget act [4], SEBIN and DGCIM allocations were published per project, which demonstrate the general objectives of projects focusing on strengthening SEBIN intelligence activities and DGCIM counterintelligence operations. Within allocation specifications, expenditure is allocated for the payment of staff and operating resources – without stipulating specific procurements, monthly spending targets, or other details for the monitoring of implementation or discretionary allocations.

Defence budgets presented in Parliament do not provide broken details on military expenditures; this information is not publicly available. A large portion of the defence budget is allocated to what is referred to in the budget as an unallocated reserve [1]. This means that the funds are used at the discretion of the Ministry of Defence, the military command or sometimes with the involvement of the Defence Commission [2].