Lithuania plans to allocate 3 percent of its GDP to defence in its next year’s draft budget, Finance Minister Gintarė Skaistė has said.
“My goal is to ensure that defence funding is 3 percent of GDP, but I think we will keep the same option we had this year, which is that if the economic indicators allow us to borrow more for national defence during the year and we have a specific need we could meet by borrowing more, then we can envisage such a possibility,” Skaistė told the Žinių Radijas radio on Thursday.
“This has allowed us to allocate 3.2 percent of GDP to national defence this year, and today, we are the fourth country among NATO countries in terms of national defence funding, so I think it is important to keep this possibility,” she added.
In her words, the projected 3 percent economic growth next year will not have a significant impact on budget revenue, as two thirds of this growth are earmarked for increasing the expenditure already foreseen in the law, such as pensions.
“In normal times, state budget revenue grows around 5 percent, which is certainly not something cosmic that could make a major breakthrough in one area or another. Most of this economic growth is programmed to be spent automatically, for example on pensions, which make a really big part of the state budget,” Skaistė explained.
“The current security and defence agreement does not include specific commitments on defence funding, but the Seimas decided earlier this year to raise some taxes to push it to at least 3 per cent of GDP.
President Gitanas Nausėda has said that Lithuania should spend at least 3.5 percent of its GDP on defence every year.
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