Председатель Партии труда: возможная непрозрачность в системе обороны дискредитирует планы по повышению налогов на оборону

According to a member of Parliament, there is currently a «battle for procurement» in the national defense system.

«The actions we are seeing today in this political arena greatly discredit the ability of politicians to ask citizens for additional funds (for defense),» A. Mazuronis said on Friday to Žinių radijas.

«Any sensible person would probably ask — maybe it’s worth first figuring out those possible embezzlements and finding out what the existing funds are being spent on, before raising the value-added tax, which will affect people with the lowest and middle incomes, before (dealing with) the taxation of individual activities,» he added.

In A. Mazuronis’ opinion, attempts to find funds in municipal budgets are also ineffective.

All this story simply discredits the search for additional funds and, in my view, is doomed to fail. It is obvious that what we are currently witnessing is nothing more than a political pre-election process,» the parliamentarian added.

In March, at the second meeting initiated by Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, four options were presented for collecting approximately 400 million euros next year, which are necessary for additional financing of national defense in Lithuania.

Funding for national defense in Lithuania this year will be 2.75 percent, but the goal is for this amount to reach at least 3 percent in the near future.