The amount of unspent money for the year ending March was the second largest since fiscal 2007, after the defense ministry was upgraded from an agency, raising questions over the current record level of military buildup, Kyodo News reported Tuesday.
The Japanese government approved a record 6.82 trillion yen defense budget for fiscal 2023, the initial year of a five-year program through fiscal 2027 by allocating a total of 43 trillion yen for defense-related spending.
The defense ministry failed to complete some budget execution procedures in time on the back of larger-than-expected increases in related contracts and projects, the report said.
With the government planning to resort to tax hikes to fund the rise in defense outlays, the failure to use up the budget could come under fire and hamper progress in discussions to revise the tax system toward the end of the year, the report said.
The amount of unspent funds in the defense budget has remained above 110 billion yen for three consecutive years through fiscal 2020, it added.
Japan has set a goal outlined in its 2022 National Security Strategy of bringing defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product in fiscal 2027, after long maintaining an informal cap of around 1 percent, or about 5 trillion yen, under its war-renouncing Constitution.
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