Japan’s initial budget for defense spending and related costs for fiscal 2026 totaled about 10.6 trillion yen ($66.5 billion), equivalent to roughly 1.9 percent of its 2022 gross domestic product, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said Friday.
Japan has set a goal of raising defense spending and related costs to 2 percent of GDP by fiscal 2027 in a notable shift from its long-standing practice of keeping defense spending around 1 percent of GDP amid growing security challenges from countries such as China and North Korea.
Using projected GDP for fiscal 2026, the ratio would stand at around 1.5 percent, Koizumi added while speaking to reporters.
Under its three key security documents adopted in late 2022, the Japanese government outlined plans to spend about 43 trillion yen on defense over the five years through 2027.
An extra budget enacted last December, including 1.7 trillion yen for security and diplomacy, allowed Japan to meet the 2 percent target two years ahead of schedule under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a security hawk who took office in October.
The initial defense budget has climbed steadily, reaching about 1.4 percent of GDP in fiscal 2023, 1.6 percent in fiscal 2024 and 1.8 percent in fiscal 2025, when calculated with fiscal 2022 GDP.
Koizumi said it is appropriate to compare annual defense spending using fiscal 2022 GDP as a baseline, as that was the reference year when the current set of security documents was compiled.
© KYODO
