Taiwan's government wants to increase its spending on defense to a new high next year amid threats from China. Louise Watt breaks down the key points of its proposed budget.
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00:00Taiwan's total defence budget is set to hit a record high next year.
00:04The country is facing increasing threats from China, and President Lai Ching-de says Taiwan
00:09must be ready to defend itself.
00:12Louise Watt has been taking a closer look at what's in the defence budget for us.
00:16Louise, Taiwan's defence is always a big talking point.
00:20What do we know about the plans for 2025?
00:23Yes, well once again, Laurel, it's about military readiness.
00:29And this budget is notable particularly because it's the first one from the administration
00:34of President Lai Ching-de.
00:36He's been in power for almost three months now, but his party has been in power for the
00:41past eight years.
00:44And during that time, they've steadily increased the amount they spend on Taiwan's defence.
00:50And so next year, Taiwan's defence budget is set to reach a new high of 19.8 billion
00:57US dollars.
00:59That compares to 18.6 billion in funding for this year.
01:05So crunching the numbers, that equates to around 2.5 to 2.75% of GDP.
01:12That's still short of the 3% of GDP that Lai promised when he was campaigning, although
01:19he did call that 3% figure a long-term target.
01:24But in any case, is this enough to deter China?
01:28Taiwan does spend more as a percentage of GDP on its defence than NATO countries like
01:35the UK, France and Germany, for instance.
01:37But it spends less than Israel, which is also facing an existential threat.
01:43Now aside from defence, other key things in the budget, the largest share of the government
01:48pie, if you like, is still going to be spent on social welfare.
01:53And in fact, next year, the government plan is to raise spending on long-term care by
01:58150 million dollars to just shy of 3 billion US dollars.
02:05That's because Taiwan has to grapple with an ageing society.
02:10And in fact, next year, Taiwan is set to become a super-aged society.
02:15What that means is more than a fifth of the population will be aged 65 or over.
02:20Other things in the budget include more money for combating fraud, for building social housing
02:28and also for better water management.
02:34So the idea being that Taiwan doesn't run dry in the summer months and it doesn't suffer
02:39from deadly flooding like we saw from a recent typhoon.
02:44Parts of these budget proposals will be debated from September when the legislature meets
02:50again after a holiday break.
02:52But the legislature now is not dominated by Lai's party anymore, but the opposition.
02:59So parts of these proposals may well come in for challenge.