Japan: average, defense spending towards unsustainable levels
The increase in raw material costs and the devaluation of the yen have caused the country’s defense spending to rise excessively. Japan , to the point of threatening the sustainability of the government’s spending plan for security. According to estimates by the progressive newspaper Asahi Shimbun, the purchase prices of major defense equipment in the 2024 fiscal year, approved in March, increased by at least one and a half times from the levels of the 2019-2022 budget. The Tokyo government plans to significantly increase military spending to 43 trillion yen (263.2 billion euros) in the five years to 2027, a ceiling set by conservative Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, but according to the intra-Party newspaper Liberal Democrats and the defense industry are multiplying requests to raise the limit.
In 2023, a Finance Ministry commission highlighted seven types of military equipment that had seen a drastic increase, including large helicopters, transport planes, submarines and tanks. According to calculations by the Asahi Shimbun, the average price of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, produced by the US company Boeing and used for the transport of troops and supplies, rose from 7.6 billion yen from fiscal 2019 to 19.6 billion yen for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF). Over the same period, the price of a P-1 patrol aircraft for border monitoring increased by 1.4 times due to additional costs for components.
The ‘Taigei’ submarine, equipped with lithium-ion batteries, now costs 95 billion yen, a 1.3-fold increase amid soaring steel and semiconductor prices. Overall, the prices of the seven items highlighted by the Ministry of Finance rose on average by 47% after the yen depreciated significantly against the US dollar, trading at 150 compared to a level of 110 in 2019.
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2024-04-14 08:09:32