El Pais is reporting how the Spanish Army is in arrears of payments for its latest toys and is at risk of not being able to pay at all.
Just wondering how the repo men will seize the assets this time, will they recruit mercenaries or send the Marines!
Translation from Spanish below:
The overall bill called special weapons' programs includes 19 weapons systems that mostly incorporate new technologies - totals 30 billion, around 3% of Spanish GDP, of which Defence has so far paid just under 5 billion.
Companies should be paid the remaining 26 billion in instalments until 2025, but defense officials themselves acknowledge that this is impossible without a drastic increase in the budget, which is unthinkable given that Spain has set a priority to reduce the deficit 6% at the end of this year and 3% in 2013 (with 2010 data, the deficit of all government is 9.2% of GDP).
Already this year the Ministry of Defence has been in serious trouble to meet their obligations.
Defence sources said they would not have enough money even if there were no additional expenditures through 2025.
In his appearance before Congress last October to present the budget for this year, Secretary of State for Defence, Constantino Mendez , already referred in the starkest terms to the situation: "We should not have purchased weapons we are not going to use for scenarios of confrontation that do not exist and, more seriously, with money that we did not have then and do not have now."
No comments:
Post a Comment