Japan Press Weekly

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2011 September 28 - October 4 [SDF]

Defense ministry requests budget for military buildup

The Defense Ministry on September 30 decided to request a total of 4.8 trillion yen as its budget for the next fiscal year, including expenditures for further deployment of the Self-Defense Forces in the Nansei Islands.

This budget request shows the ministry’s intention to maintain the defense budget as sacrosanct and to strengthen capability of the SDF amid the controversy over how to secure the financial resources needed to fund work to recover from the March 11 quake and tsunami.

In the budget request, 1.5 billion yen is earmarked to buy land in Okinawa’s Yonaguni Island for the deployment of new units of the Ground and Air Self-Defense Forces in accordance with the new National Defense Guideline Program (NDPG), published in December.

Moreover, 66.2 billion yen is allocated in the budget request to carry out a plan to set up a “dynamic defense force” and beef up defense capability in the Nansei Islands which was also announced in the NDPG in rivalry with China.

The budget allotted for the purchase of four new fighter jets is 55.1 billion yen and for the fourth helicopter carrier is 119 billion yen.

In the request, the ministry temporarily allotted 147 billion yen for spending related to the realignment of the U.S. forces in Japan and 8.3 billion yen for expenditures related to the Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), the same amount as the previous year.

The ministry requested 184 billion yen (1.2 billion yen up from the previous) for the so-called “sympathy budget” for the stationing of U.S. forces in Japan.