Japan Minister Vows to Raise Defense Spending Ratio

Tokyo, Oct. 26 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s new Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama on Sunday vowed to “do everything possible” to secure funds to raise the share of the country’s defense spending to its gross domestic product to 2 pct in the current fiscal year. “Japan is in the most severe security environment in the world, so we have to bring forward what we think is necessary,” she said in a television program. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office Tuesday, said in her first policy address at the Diet, Japan’s parliament, Friday that she aims to achieve the 2 pct goal in fiscal 2025 ending next March, two years ahead of the earlier envisaged fiscal 2027, by utilizing a planned supplementary state budget in addition to the full budget for the current fiscal year. The government had planned to secure 43 trillion yen in defense budgets over the five years through fiscal 2027 partly by raising the corporate, income and tobacco taxes, dipping into budget surpluses and promoting spending reform. Katayama did not clearly rule out the possibility of the government issuing deficit-financing bonds as a means to secure defense budgets, noting that “the existence of the nation is now at stake.” On Takaichi’s plan to set up a new growth strategy council, economic and fiscal policy minister Minoru Kiuchi said in the same TV program, “We hope to make drastic investments in growth areas such as the artificial intelligence, semiconductor, shipbuilding and aerospace sectors, and recover the costs in several years.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]