Japan reveals record defense budget, but it’s still not enough
Japan's Cabinet has approved a record draft defense budget worth $56 billion for the next fiscal year, as tensions with China and North Korea rise. For comparison, Italy had a 2023 budget of $36 billion, so spending will be 50% more than Italy.
The 7.95 trillion yen draft budget for the 2024 fiscal year, which begins in April, was approved by the Cabinet and is in line with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's pledge to increase defense spending in the coming years.
Japan has a pacifist post-war Constitution, which limits its military capacity to ostensibly defensive measures.
Last year, however, he updated key security and defense policies, explicitly underlining the challenge posed by China and setting the goal of doubling defense spending to reach the NATO standard of 2% of gross domestic product by 2027. In reality, to reach this standard, it would have to grow by another 30 billion dollars.
The defense budget announced on Friday includes 370 billion yen for the construction of two new warships that will use the Aegis missile defense system developed by the United States and will better defend Japan
Japan also plans to spend 734 billion yen to strengthen the nation's "stand-off" defense capability through actions such as purchasing missiles.
Japanese Type 10 tank
Additionally, about 75 billion yen will be used to jointly develop interceptors to shoot down hypersonic missiles.
The budget also includes the costs that Japan agreed to pay the United States for the transfer of American forces to Japan.
The defense budget is part of the 112.07′ billion yen that Japan plans to spend next fiscal year, down from a record 114.4 trillion yen the previous year.
Japan wants to dramatically expand the country's defense capacity, alarmed by China's growing military ambitions.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has also fueled fears that China could take control of Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy claimed by Beijing.
North Korea's missile launches and the possibility of future nuclear tests have also pushed Japan to increase defense spending.
Earlier in the year, Kishida stated that Japan would purchase 400 Tomahawk missiles from the United States .
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new Economic Scenarios articles.
The article Japan Reveals Record Defense Budget, But It's Still Not Enough comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-giappone-rivela-un-bilancio-record-per-la-difesa-ma-non-e-ancora-abbastanza/ on Sat, 30 Dec 2023 09:00:50 +0000.