Japan’s defence-related budget for fiscal 2024 has expanded to 1.6% of gross domestic product, steadily approaching the 2% threshold in line with Western economies, the Nikkei Asia reported on Saturday.
Spending will total 8.9 trillion yen ($56.7 billion) in the 12 months through March 2025, Defence Minister Minoru Kihara told reporters Friday. The percentage of GDP will rise 0.2 point on the year.
The Ministry of Defense’s budget makes up 7.7 trillion yen of the spending. The other 1.2 trillion yen comes from such areas as the Japan Coast Guard budget and United Nations peacekeeping operations.
Under a trio of national security documents published in late 2022, the Japanese government aims for defense-related spending of 2% of GDP by fiscal 2027. The government has set a defence spending goal of 43 trillion yen over five years through fiscal 2027.
The 1.6% figure is based on GDP for fiscal 2022. If fiscal 2024 defence spending were to be compared against the Cabinet Office’s projection of GDP for the sam
e year, the ratio would hover around 1.4%.
The defence spending increases will generally be based on the fiscal 2022 GDP, the government had explained. This aligns with Defense Ministry practices, and the underlying goal was to reach 2% at an early date.
Japan previously aimed to spend no more than 1% of its GDP on defence.
Global military spending grew 6.8% to an all-time high of $2.44 trillion in 2023, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said Monday. Japan, hit by the weak yen, fell one spot to 10th place in the global ranking. But its spending grew at the fastest rate in more than 50 years.
Source: Emirates News Agency