DefMin Dincu: Army endowment programmes to be brought forward, as Parliament is expected to earmark 2.5pct of GDP

Some Army endowment programmes will be brought forward, if Parliament approves the allocation of 2.5pct of the GDP for defence, Minister Vasile Dincu stated on Thursday, Agerpres reports.

He was asked what plans the Bucharest authorities had for military procurement, given President Klaus Iohannis' announcement of the need to allocate 2.5pct of GDP for defence.

"Romania has an extended plan, a strategy called the Army 2040 and which has three periods, 2021-2026, then 2026-2032 and 2040, the end. (...) Our document is quite well anchored in reality, for that was one of Romania's topics, one of the topics with which Romania tried to sensitize NATO, by saying that there is a possibility of a conflict nearby, because we knew somewhat or intuited what Russia can do in this area. This means that we did have some endowment plans. And probably some of these plans will be brought forward, if we succeed next year - and I think that Parliament will approve 2.5pct of the GDP. This means that my plan is to use 30 per cent of this money for endowment. The NATO limit is 20, and last year we used 26pct. I think we have important needs and that means we will also bring plans related to land forces, endowment, the purchase of aircraft for the aviation area and, also, the purchase of corvettes and other forms of modern weapons," Dincu told Digi 24 private television broadcaster.

The minister said the acquisitions would be made sooner.

"There are some plans, the countries insist and Romania was among them, and we have been talking lately at NATO to make joint acquisitions, that is to make acquisitions together, not separately, depending on the money we have, and to try, for instance, to come up with joint projects as soon as possible. (...) And Europe also did this under the Strategic Compass, the document that we managed to approve last week, approving other investments and other funds from the European Union, such ad the European Defence Fund, which was not used very well before, but now it will certainly help the states," Dincu also stated.

Asked what Romania will buy urgently, as weapons, the Minister of Defence specified: "Urgently, we will purchase corvettes, which is a project that is almost finished, we are just waiting, and it will come very soon, for the decision of the association between Naval Group and the Constanta shipyard, we are waiting for the last offer. We have been negotiating for the last few months, for the ministry is not the buyer... Romtehnica is also a public procurement, which is ultimately not about our ministry."

"We also have a few projects related to the Patriot area, we still have to receive... We will buy more anti-aircraft batteries. We have an important area and we already have a lot of deliveries in the area of land mobility, armoured vehicles of various types, platforms in the area of light armoured vehicles; we also have projects, a very important projects that we are going to launch this year, which is the drones project, by which we are going to buy drones," he said.

The Minister also highlighted the Romanian participation, in offset system, in these endowment projects.

"In all these projects we rely on two things: acquisitions at the highest level, but, at the same time, Romanian participation, offset, meaning maintenance or production in our area. I think we will also benefit from a fortunate situation, and we will be able to relaunch, we started a project together with the Minister of Economy, a project to relaunch our defence industry, as the new trend and situation has shown that Europe needs to bring home some of the productions in critical infrastructure, including in the area of armaments, which were made somewhere else. And it possible that the important countries producing weapons, in the world and in Europe, such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, may come, and I invited them to my meetings with all the ministers, we invited them to come to Romania to make a joint venture with these big suppliers, so that we can produce here too, in order to have a participation in the innovation programnes," Dincu explained.