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Cabinet signs off on 2025 budget
The cabinet has approved a proposed NT$3.33 trillion central government budget for 2025. The proposal includes the NT$3.13 trillion baseline budget and the NT$199.8 billion special budget.
Spending on combating fraud and improving water control systems will see the largest percentage point increases. Under the proposed budget, NT$7.3 billion in funding will go towards efforts to combat fraud, an increase of 480% from the current budget. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the planned increase will primarily support the National Police Agency's anti-fraud operations.
Meanwhile, the planned allocation to help local governments improve water control systems will rise to NT$55.1 billion in 2025, which represents a year-over-year increase of 40.4%.
The 2025 general government budget proposal will be sent to the Legislative Yuan for approval at the end of this month.
The budget proposal calls for a defence budget of NT$647 billion for 2025, which represents 2.45% of the island's GDP. The defence budget proposal includes NT$181.5 billion for personnel costs and NT$148.7 billion for military equipment, ammunition, and equipment maintenance.
Spending on military investment will increase by NT$20.3 billion and the Ministry of National Defense (MND) ministry is also expected to set aside NT$90.4 billion as a special budget to purchase military aircraft and other equipment to upgrade sea and air defence capabilities.
Although 2025's total defence budget is a decline of 0.05 percentage points from this year, the defence ministry is denying the government is cutting its defence budget for next year, stressing that expenditure has seen "steady increases" in recent years.
Defence officials say raising the annual defence budget to 3% of GDP remains "a goal," but in the meantime it will draw up allocation plans according to the country's "defence needs" and "financial situation."
Meanwhile, the cabinet has approved a request by the MND for the manufacture of seven domestically built submarines. The submarines will be based on the "Narwhal" prototype, which was launched in September of last year.
Cabinet spokesperson Chen Shih-kai says Premier Cho Jung-tai signed off on the plan to build seven submarines from next year through 2038 at an estimated cost of NT$284 billion.
The 13-year plan will be part of the Indigenous Defense Submarine program under which the "Narwhal" prototype was developed.
