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Germany's finance minister on Tuesday vowed to lift the country's defense spending to 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product in 2029 as he presented the new government's spending plans. Chancellor Friedrich Merz's coalition pushed plans through parliament to enable higher defence spending by loosening strict rules on incurring debt even before it took office last month. It acted ahead of the NATO summit starting Tuesday that aims to raise allies' defence spending target from 2 per cent of GDP to 3.5 per cent, plus another 1.5 per cent for potentially defense-related infrastructure. Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said Germany's defence spending will hit 2.4 per cent of GDP this year, and we will raise defence spending step by step so that we will reach a NATO quota of 3.5 per cent in 2029. Klingbeil, who is also the vice chancellor, said he will be very vigilant that the money is spent efficiently, for example by aiming for greater cooperation at European level on procurement, ...
Pakistan coalition government has endorsed an 18 per cent increase in defence spending to over Rs 2.5 trillion in the next budget due to tensions with India, according to a media report on Tuesday. The government is set to unveil the 2025-26 budget in the first week of the next month ahead of the start of the new fiscal year from July 1. India and Pakistan have witnessed heightened tensions since the April 22 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam that killed 26 people. The Express Tribune reported that the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) delegation, led by its chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, met with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his economic team to discuss the budget matters on Monday. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-led government shared roughly Rs 17.5 trillion worth of new budget framework with its key ally, the PPP, which agreed to 18 per cent increase in the defence outlay. There was a consensus between the PML-N and the PPP to increase the defence budget du
The Chinese military on Wednesday criticised the United States for increasing its defence budget to USD one trillion, saying that "wanton use of force will not make America great again". Reacting to reports that the US defence budget for fiscal year 2026 will reach a record USD one trillion, Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of National Defence, said such an act would only inflict painful disasters upon the people of the US and the rest of the world. China, which is the second largest defence spender after the US, hiked its defence budget early this year by 7.2% increase to USD 249, which is a USD 17 billion rise compared to last year. America's sky-high defence budget exposed once again the bellicose nature of the US side and its belief in "might makes right," Zhang was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The US government is in heavy debt, yet it keeps pouring ill-gotten wealth exploited from other countries into manufacturing weapons,