The Ministry of National Defense is pushing for an increase in defense spending as the Executive Yuan prepares the fiscal 2019 budget, an unnamed military official said.
Social welfare spending is expected to be the largest expenditure in next year’s budget and would not be less than this year’s allocation of NT$490.6 billion (US$16.3 billion), but the defense ministry’s budget would not be less than it was this year, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) Minister Chu Tzer-ming (朱澤民) has said.
The basic maintenance fees for ministries and agencies are being considered in the spirit of zero-based budgeting, he added.
The DGBAS is not yet sure if next year’s overall government spending would exceed NT$2 trillion, he said.
Overall government spending has been kept under NT$2 trillion per year for the past two years.
Defense ministry spokesman Major General Chen Chung-chi (陳中吉) said the ministry is optimistic given Chu’s comments.
In 2016, then-defense minister Feng Shih-kuan (馮世寬) said he hoped to see the defense budget increased to NT$400 billion, but it was not.
Since overall spending next year will not see an obvious increase, it is unlikely that the defense budget would be greatly increased, although it will probably be “appropriately increased,” an unnamed Executive Yuan official with knowledge of the matter said.
Other ministries and agencies are also reportedly hoping for budget increases.
The DGBAS in April gave each ministry and agency a quota from which they could allocate their budgets, an unnamed source familiar with the matter said.
They have submitted their budget proposals to the Executive Yuan for review, the source said.
However, 10 of them — including the health, education and culture ministries — have submitted budgets that exceed the quotas they were given and are hoping for an increase, the source said.
The DGBAS would look for irregularities in the budget proposals, an unnamed Executive Yuan official with knowledge of the matter said.
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