Japan defense budget biggest in 18 years
Print Edition
Japan’s defense budget will grow 2.2 percent in the next fiscal year from April, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said yesterday, posting the biggest rise in nearly two decades.
The budget increase comes as tension between Japan and China simmers over the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.
Japan’s defense spending next year comes in at 4.78 trillion yen (US$45.86 billion), up 2.2 percent on the year, Onodera told reporters after meeting Finance Minister Taro Aso. That would be the biggest percentage rise in 18 years and the second consecutive year of growth.
Saddled with public debt, Japan had cut its defense spending for 10 straight years through to 2012, before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who returned to power a year ago pledging to bolster Japan’s defense posture, raised defense expenditure by 0.8 percent this year.
“This is quite satisfactory for the Defense Ministry. We will carry on defending Japan’s safety securely,” Onodera said.
The budget decision comes on the heels of new defense guidelines and military build-up plans, unveiled this week, which call for a 2.6 percent rise in defense spending for five years starting next April.
The Defense Ministry’s initial budget request, submitted to the Ministry of Finance in August, has been trimmed by 0.7 percent. Items in the budget request include 69.3 billion yen for four of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jets, 73.3 billion yen to build a destroyer with improved capability to detect submarines and 77.3 billion yen to buy four P-1 patrol planes made by Kawasaki Heavy Industries.
Japan also plans to allocate 300 million yen for research on surveillance drones and tilt-rotor aircraft, with an eye to procuring them in the year starting April 2015, the budget request showed.
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