High record for defense budget of Japan with $44 billion for the fiscal year 2017 12612163

Defence & Security News - Japan
 
High record for defense budget of Japan with $44 billion for the fiscal year 2017.
The Japanese government has approved a record-high defense budget for the fiscal year 2017 with a growing ambition for military expansion. The Japanese defense budget, rising for the fifth straight year since Abe took office in 2012, hit an unprecedented 5.13 trillion yen (around 44 billion U.S. dollars) for the fiscal year starting April 2017.
     
The Japanese government has approved a record-high defense budget for the fiscal year 2017 with a growing ambition for military expansion. The Japanese defense budget, rising for the fifth straight year since Abe took office in 2012, hit an unprecedented 5.13 trillion yen (around 44 billion U.S. dollars) for the fiscal year starting April 2017. A paratrooper assigned to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, June 9, 2016, during Exercise Arctic Aurora. (Photo copyright US Armed Forces)
     
The budget is expected to cover a purchasing list including a number of state-of-the-art military equipment for the nation, such as F-35A fighters, V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, as well as a new sea-based ballistic missile interceptors, the Standard Missile-3 Block 2A, which has been co-developed by Japan and the United States.
 

Japan is also speeding up the establishment of new forces, such as a Marine Corps-like amphibious platoon, and is mulling introduction of an expensive U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

The constitution prohibits Japan from maintaining any war potential, or from using force as a means of settling international disputes. It also decrees that the Japanese people forever renounce war.

The huge military spending will also incur an excessive financial burden to the nation that is already mired in fiscal woes as its arrears continue to stand as the highest in the industrialized world, amounting to more than twice the size of Japan's GDP.

Japan has optimistically anticipated a tax revenue of 57.71 trillion yen (491 billion U.S. dollars) in fiscal 2017 to cut its debt, though very slightly, to 35.3 percent from 35.6 percent in the fiscal 2016 budget.