The Ministry of Defense is not resting content with the accord reached by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Finance Yair Lapid last week on an additional NIS 6 billion for the defense budget. Ministry sources say that this will mean a defense budget totaling NIS 57 billion for 2015, whereas the army requires a minimum of NIS 62 billion.
Besides the promised NIS 6 billion budget addition, Netanyahu and Lapid agreed that the army will get a supplement of NIS 7-8 billion this year to cover the cost of Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.
A further demand raised by the Ministry of Defense in recent weeks, for a special budget of NIS 8.5 billion annually as an addition to the defense budget, remains open. According to the Ministry of Defense, this is needed for a multi-year program over 3-6 years for procuring hundreds of APCs, tanks, air defense systems for intercepting rockets and missiles, and preparing the IDF and its infrastructures for future conflicts.
Military sources say that in the absence of understandings on expansion of the base defense budget for next year by some NIS 11 billion, there will be no alternative to obtaining a supplementary budget during 2015 by means of transfers between ministerial budgets, through the various Knesset committees. According to these sources, an addition of only NIS 6 billion to the defense budget base will lead to a situation in which the army's activity will grind to a halt in the first few months of 2015: the army will reduce, to the point of stopping altogether, training programs and procurement and armament programs, including procurement of Iron Dome rocket interception systems; regular army troops will be diverted to routine security duties from training for future, new situations; and so on. "We'll present the significance of this budget to the prime minister, the members of the security cabinet, and the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee," a military source said.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 29, 2014
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