Romanian President Klaus Iohannis stated that the difference between the Defense allocation of 2.5% of GDP, as a commitment to NATO, and the actual expenses should not be approached “in accounting”.
He added that the allocated money could not be fully spent including because some purchases could not be made because the products could not be found due to the demand being greater than the supply.
“It is not good to have accounting approaches, but to see the picture a little bigger. There are few main reasons why the allocation was one and the expenditure was another, because the initial allocation respected the political commitment. The money could not be spent like that as predicted for a few reasons, some up to us, some not. One reason not up to us: simply things we wanted to buy couldn’t be found. It’s a global problem in the endowment area military, the demand is incomparably greater than the supply, and certain things we wanted we could not get in this short time”, explained the head of state.
The second factor, Iohannis pointed out, was the “budgetary difficulties created by inflation and many of the problems we had”.
“So, the availability, that is, the liquid money, did not exist when those in charge of the endowment wanted to spend it and, in this way, many expenditures were actually made, but they were not made in calendar year until December 31, a lot was done in early January and February,” he added.
According to the president, these expenses were made for the year 2023, when they were committed. “We have to admit that a factor that disturbed not only the endowment and spending on Defense, but in general also disturbed the Romanians was the high inflation we had last year. So, these are the explanations and I think that it’s good to know that we spent a lot of money on Defense, not to spend money, but to make Romania safer,” Klaus Iohannis pointed out.
Last month, media in Bucharest quoted a NATO analysis that reported that Romania allocated 2.5% of GDP to Defense in 2023, but managed to spend only 1.6%, thus being just below the Alliance average of 1.73%.
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