South Sudanese members of parliament have authorized massive spending on the military in the coming year in spite of a new peace agreement, with about half of the budget approved last week allocated to security services and the military.

The security sector will take 4.58 billion SSP of the 10.3 billion budget, according to figures announced in parliament last week. Total transfers to state governments, counties and special administrative areas will amount to a little over 1 billion and the rule of law sector will take 1.5 billion.

Given that state governments also spend some of their transfers on security, including for state police and prisons services, the total planned spending on the security sector (including rule of law sector) is well more than half of the total budget allocation.

This means that the budget is in line with the recent wartime spending pattern and generally does not reflect any increase in social services.

How the security budget will be spent is not completely clear, especially since there are no reliable financial performance reports by the security agencies from recent years. The Ministry of Defence has always refused making its spending public, making it difficult to track the nation’s investment on the military and allied agencies.

In the new budget, allocations for education and health are SSP 677m and SSP 316m (equivalent to about 15% and 7% of the security budget, respectively). Around 185 million SSP go to infrastructure, with around 88m allocated for roads and bridges and 33 million for transport.

The parliament has also allocated SSP 35 million for the members of parliament to carry out mobilization and dissemination of the new IGAD peace agreement in their constituencies. Last year a similar allocation was made for popular mobilization in support of war efforts.

Photo: SPLA generals on Independence Day, 2015, Juba