BRATISLAVA: Slovakia will increase its military budget to the NATO target of two percent of gross domestic product by 2022, two years earlier than planned, President Zuzana Caputova told NATO officials in Brussels Tuesday.
"In relation to the two percent of GDP, we are pleased to achieve this target even earlier, in 2022 -- that is two years earlier" than previously stated, Caputova said, quoted by Slovak media in Brussels following talks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Slovakia, a NATO and eurozone member state of 5.4 million people, currently spends 1.73 percent of its GDP on defence, according to the 2019 state budget.
Slovakia had earlier committed to reach NATO's recommended two percent of GDP military spending target in 2024.
NATO member states agreed to the spending target in 2014.
Bratislava will spend nearly 900 million euros ($1.02 billion) on defence in 2019, the finance ministry said.
Defence Ministry state secretary Robert Ondrejcsak told AFP on Tuesday that most of this budget will be spent on a comprehensive modernisation of the country's army.
"We will soon get rid of technical dependence on Russia," he said.
Ondrejcsak was referring to Slovakia's current dependence on Russian military hardware, a legacy of its past in the Communist bloc before 1989.
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