Ministry of Defense Budget Department head Brig.-Gen. Ram Aminoah today presented the cabinet the 2008-12 plan streamlining and freeing up money for procurements.
Defense sources told "Globes" that the plan Brig.-Gen. Aminoah is presenting totals NIS 9.4 billion, which fits with the Brodet Committee's targets to save NIS 10 billion in the first five-year plan and NIS 20 billion in the second five-year plan. They added that the defense streamlining plan includes savings and cutbacks by the IDF and Ministry of Defense units in procurements, construction, and personnel. The sources said that these measures would save more than NIS 17 billion by 2017.
The Ministry of Defense rejects claims made by Ministry of Finance officials in the past few days that the Ministry of Defense is waging a campaign to frighten the public in order to obtain a substantial budget supplement. The Ministry of Defense said that it has not asked for a single shekel, but is demanding implementation of Brodet multiyear budget plan, set in the aftermath of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and approved by the government in 2007.
"We are embarking on a difficult discussion today, the likes of which the forum of cabinet ministers in Israel have never undertaken until now, certainly not by the forum of the full plenum of ministers," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of today's cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv on the defense budget. "At the end of this discussion, we will be asked to decide not only on how much money to invest in defense but where to invest the money within the defense establishment. This is a discussion that concerns not only priorities between the defense budget and other ministries represented here."
Netanyahu continued, "This is a discussion about the priorities within the defense budget, not down to the last penny, not within each individual section, but about the main questions regarding building the force related to the multi-year plan, for the next five years, perhaps the next decade. We will make complicated decisions about the size of the budget and the channeling of the budget to the main components of the force. This is a complex and serious discussion. I doubt that we will finish it today but we must finish it in order to move forward on the 2013 budget, to chart a path to the 2013 defense budget, to chart a path to the defense budget for the next five years, with consequences for the next decade. Therefore, we must also respond to the historic changes that are taking place around us.
Netanyahu warned, "We must be ready for the changing threats that are being directed at the State of Israel. We must see to it that the security which Israelis have enjoyed over past three-and-a-half years continues under the changing conditions. Around the Cabinet table, we will listen to the professional elements and we will decide according to the defense concept that fits these changes."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 15, 2012
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