Japan's unused defense budget in FY 2023 totals 130 bil. yen

Japan has set a target of raising its annual defense outlays gradually to reach about 2 percent of gross domestic product in fiscal 2027

The amount of unused funds in the defense budget has remained above 110 billion yen for three consecutive years through fiscal 2020.

Seems wasteful to continually increase the defense budget to some arbitrary goal — i.e., 2% of GDP — when the budget hasn’t been fully spent every year since 2020.

Use that unused money to raise salaries of the SDF personnel at least on par with the private sector. Then there should be no recruitment problem.

That's really show JGovt efficiency, collecting money from many people at the end. Showing no efficiency at all. Every year defense budget, hit record budget.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/12/22/japan/politics/record-defense-budget/

Absolutely appalling that anything would go unspent when anti-ship missiles are needed at maximum production capability.

Unused funds then just sit idle somewhere?…seems to be a recurring pattern that a large amount is not used each year

They should have used the funds to fire some missiles over North Korea. It would have marked another humorous entry in the Asian Playground Wars.

Yes, go drop 130 billion yen on the eastern side of North Korea. (That’s China, by the way!)

That’ll show ‘em our smarts.

On top of many other unused surplus of tax money, while missing the threshold to regulate the crashing currency. I have no idea what the current administration is doing.

Wow, someone must have submitted a VERY FAT budget to start with, send it to Ukraine or better yet to the starving kids in Palestine.

With the government planning to resort to tax hikes to fund the rise in defense spending

Please, no

Maybe use it to increase SDF salaries...

Funny to know they are clueless how to spend what they asked for?

So much of paper work wasted... to start with

So.... use it to pay off government dept.

This is the real news on Japan's defense budget. Japanese MOD is starving for funds because of collapsing yen's exchange rate and are cutting back massively on new defense procurements for honoring old commitments contracted at 100 yen/dollar but Japanese government now must pay 162 yen/dollar.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/business/japan-yen-defense-spending.html

The Yen Is Plunging. So Is Japan’s Defense Budget.

The yen’s collapse this year to a nearly four-decade low is undermining Japan’s plans for its largest military buildup in postwar history.

The government has slashed orders for aircraft, and officials warn that further cuts may be imminent. Japan buys much of its military equipment from American companies, in transactions done in dollars. The government’s purchasing power has been drastically eroded by the yen’s diminishing value.

“What we are achieving in terms of actual defense capabilities and our original target — the two are not lined up,” Satoshi Morimoto, a former Japanese defense minister, said in an interview. The value of the defense budget over five years “has effectively been reduced by 30 percent,” Mr. Morimoto said.

The problem: The budget was based on an exchange rate of 108 yen to the dollar, which even then was far from the actual rate of around 135 yen to the dollar. Now, with the yen weakening to 161 to the dollar, the cost of equipment including helicopters, submarines and tanks has skyrocketed.

“At this point, even Japan-made military equipment is going up in price because many internal parts are sourced from overseas,” Ms. Takeuchi said. “Japan is already cutting procurement of certain aircraft, and if you can’t increase the budget, more cuts become inevitable,” she added.

OMG. .quick buy some more US produced, over priced hardware that will never be used.

OMG. .quick buy some more US produced, over priced hardware that will never be used

...and yet, those who are not qualified rushes off to Russia, China and NK to buy even more useless hardware. Prime example, India and China spending billions on Russian weapons but uses sticks and stones to fight each other. LOL.

With the government planning to resort to tax hikes to fund the rise in defense spending, 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.

Rest assured, the tax hikes will still going to happen, except the money will go into the endless pockets of LDP and it's acolytes.

This just proove that the budget is more than enough to sustain all industry and departments, however never enough to satisfy the greed of the Politicians.