Japan's Prime Minister Earmarks $65Bln Defense Budget for Fiscal 2027, Reports Say

08:30 GMT, 16 December 2022

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has told the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that defense spending would be 8.9 trillion yen ($65) in 2027 fiscal year, in line with the country's plan to boost military expenditures to 2% of GDP over the next five years, Japanese media reported on Friday.

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The 2% of GDP target is in line with NATO standards. To catch up, Japan needs to increase its current 1.2% spending by about 11 trillion yen per year. Kishida's plan is to achieve it by increasing corporate and tobacco taxes and spend a total 43 trillion yen on defense from 2023-2027.

The Japanese government is planning to spend 6.5 trillion yen in fiscal 2023 starting in April, as opposed to 5.2 trillion yen in 2022, the report said.

Japanese and U.S. joint fighter jets fly in formation over the Sea of Japan, Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Kishida has also said that the 11-trillion-yen target would be achieved by increasing the budget of the maritime security service, which serves as the border security service in Japan, as cited by the Fuji broadcaster.

The maritime security service’s budget will be increased almost 1.5 times by fiscal year 2027 and will amount to 320 billion yen compared to 223.1 billion yen in 2022, the report added.