Lithuania Aims to Spend More on Defense

The country’s Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis said that Lithuania’s aim is to spend more than 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense in accordance with NATO demands.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Lithuania’s aim is to spend more than 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense in accordance with NATO demands, the country’s Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis said.

“I believe that the next goal for us should be 2.2 percent or 2.4 of GDP,” Karoblis told the Delfi news portal on Tuesday.

At the same time, he added that it was first of all necessary to ensure the effective use of funds that had already been allocated for defense in 2017.

On December 15, Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said that Vilnius was set to comply with the decisions taken at the latest NATO summit in Warsaw and spend 1.8 percent of GDP on defense in 2017. By 2018, Lithuania’s defense budget should reach 2 percent of GDP, according to the government.

So far only five NATO member-states are meeting the alliance’s goal of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense — the United States, Great Britain, Greece, Estonia and Poland.