Too much navy cash?

Re: “Govt defends ‘cheap’ sub deal”, ( BP, April 26).

Royal Thai Navy and other military government officials continue to stress that the controversial procurement of a Chinese-supplied submarine is somehow more acceptable because the money to pay for the sub will come from the navy’s “own budget”. Say what? Surely, everyone knows that whether the funds come the Royal Thai Navy’s budget or the government’s central budget, the 13.5 billion baht still ultimately comes from the same source — from Thai taxpayers.

The question is not which account the money comes from, but what alternatives may exist for potentially better use of the financial resources. If the cost of the submarine is coming from the navy’s budget, it presumably means the navy is sacrificing other needs (coastal surface cutters, for example). Alternatively, if all the navy’s needs are being met and it still has reserves to buy a submarine, people could conclude that the navy’s budget is excessively bloated, in which case its budget may be cut by the amount of the submarine purchase and the funds redirected to worthy expenditures in other sectors.

SAMANEA SAMAN