Data · Budget Decade
Budget Decade
A three-trillion-dollar household ledger: how it is split, who grew, where the cuts fell
A ledger of three trillion dollars, stamped this year only on the fourteenth of August. Where the money went these ten years — this page lays it flat.
A sum of money walks a year and a half, through three branches of government, before anyone can say it was truly spent.
The life of a budget: the Executive Yuan drafts, the Legislative Yuan reviews, the President promulgates, agencies spend, the audit closes the books
Every fiscal year (1 January to 31 December) has a budget that starts life the January before and is only closed in the July after. Seven stations, each with a statutory deadline. The bottom row of each card shows where FY2026 actually stood — that is where the 351-day story lives.
- 1
Draft
Each agency estimates its needs (概算); the Cabinet sets ceilings; DGBAS compiles the general budget bill.
Budget Act §2, §46
FY2025 / FY2026 in reality FY2026: Cabinet approved 2025-08-21
- 2
Submit
The bill and the policy plan are delivered to the legislature.
Budget Act §46; Constitution §59
FY2025 / FY2026 in reality FY2026: delivered end of Aug 2025
- 3
Review
Plenary Q&A → referral to committees → caucus negotiation → second and third readings. Legislators may cut, freeze, or attach resolutions; they may not raise spending.
Budget Act §51
FY2025 / FY2026 in reality FY2026: referred 2026-04-17, passed 2026-08-14 (257 days past deadline)
- 4
Promulgate / reconsider
Promulgation turns the bill into the legal budget. If the Cabinet finds the result unworkable it may, within 10 days, ask for reconsideration; the legislature decides within 15 days and a simple majority upholds the original.
Budget Act §51; Additional Articles §3
FY2025 / FY2026 in reality FY2025: reconsideration rejected 2025-03-12
- 5
Execute
Allocations released month by month; frozen items need a committee report to unlock; supplementary (§79) and special (§83) budgets live outside. If the budget is late, only continuing items may be spent (§54).
Budget Act §54, §79, §83
FY2025 / FY2026 in reality FY2026: ran under §54 from 1 Jan to 14 Aug
- 6
Final accounts
The general final account is compiled and sent to the Control Yuan (National Audit Office).
Final Accounts Act §21; Constitution §60
FY2025 / FY2026 in reality FY2025: Cabinet final-account release 2026-04-23
- 7
Audit
The audit report and the final audited figures go to the legislature. Those audited figures are what §2 of this page uses for FY2016–FY2024.
Final Accounts Act §26; Constitution §105
FY2025 / FY2026 in reality FY2024 audited figures feed the ten-year function table
Sources: Budget Act §46, §51, §54, §79, §83; Final Accounts Act §21, §26; Constitution §59, §60, §105 and Additional Articles §3 (all at law.moj.gov.tw). Deadlines assume a calendar fiscal year.
The river set out at one point nine trillion, ten years later it stands at the door of three; in one of those years the water rose four hundred billion at once.
Central government legal expenditure grew from NT$1.98T to NT$2.99T in ten years, up 51%
Three lines, three moments of the same money: what the Executive Yuan proposed, what the Legislative Yuan passed, and what was actually spent by year-end. The proposal is always the highest line, the final account always the lowest; the gap between them is this page’s subject.
Proposed, legal and final expenditure, FY2016–FY2026 (NT$100M)
Data table
| Year | Proposed | Legal | Final accounts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 19,982 | 19,760 | 19,399.5 |
| 2017 | 19,980 | 19,740 | 19,273 |
| 2018 | 19,918 | 19,669 | 19,094.1 |
| 2019 | 20,220 | 19,980 | 19,558.1 |
| 2020 | 21,022 | 20,776 | 20,393.5 |
| 2021 | 21,615 | 21,359 | 20,890.7 |
| 2022 | 22,784 | 22,511 | 22,139.6 |
| 2023 | 27,191 | 26,891 | 26,277.8 |
| 2024 | 28,818 | 28,519 | 27,841.8 |
| 2025 | 31,324.7 | 29,249.7 | — |
| 2026 | 30,349.7 | 29,869.7 | — |
The jump sits in FY2023: legal expenditure went from NT$2.25T to NT$2.69T, a 19.5% rise in a single year, the largest step of the decade. FY2025 shows the other kind of gap: the Executive Yuan proposed NT$3.13T, the Legislative Yuan passed NT$2.92T, and the distance between the two lines is the cut this page returns to in §4.
Measured against the economy the river is calmer than it looks. Expenditure as a share of nominal GDP stayed between 9.6% and 11.1% across the ten years, and the one-year-plus debt ratio fell from 33.0% to 25.2% against a statutory ceiling of 40.6%. The budget grew because the country did.
Expenditure as % of GDP and debt ratio, FY2016–FY2026
Data table
| Year | Spending / GDP | Debt ratio |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 11.1% | 33.0% |
| 2017 | 10.7% | 31.6% |
| 2018 | 10.4% | 30.7% |
| 2019 | 10.3% | 29.6% |
| 2020 | 10.2% | 30.0% |
| 2021 | 9.6% | 29.8% |
| 2022 | 9.7% | 29.2% |
| 2023 | 11.1% | 28.1% |
| 2024 | 10.9% | 27.0% |
| 2025 | 10.7% | 25.2% |
| 2026 | 10.6% | 26.5% |
Sources: DGBAS press releases on Legislative Yuan review results, each fiscal year; Executive Yuan final-account press releases; DGBAS FY2026 general explanation ref. table 4 (GDP ratio); National Treasury Administration debt tables. Final accounts for FY2025 and FY2026 are not yet published.
Three parts in ten to the old, the young, the sick, the poor; two parts to schools and laboratories; two more to guns and soldiers’ pay.
Social welfare has been the largest function all decade; defense climbed to third in FY2026, only NT$7.8B behind education
The government sorts every dollar into nine “functions”. Read the stacked area for the total and how each band thickens; read the 100% view for shares. Note the basis: FY2016–FY2024 are audited final accounts, FY2025 is the legal budget, FY2026 is the proposal — the only ten-year series DGBAS publishes on one table.
Expenditure by function, FY2016–FY2026 (NT$100M)
Data table
| Category | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social welfare | 4,601 | 4,722 | 4,873 | 4,903 | 5,234 | 5,568 | 6,151 | 7,068 | 7,813 | 8,155 | 8,318 |
| Education, science & culture | 3,824 | 4,013 | 3,867 | 4,070 | 4,121 | 4,119 | 4,415 | 4,818 | 5,381 | 5,829 | 5,566 |
| National defense | 3,093 | 3,057 | 3,137 | 3,241 | 3,355 | 3,462 | 3,547 | 3,870 | 4,162 | 4,591 | 5,488 |
| Economic development | 2,667 | 2,567 | 2,331 | 2,417 | 2,501 | 2,506 | 2,553 | 4,762 | 4,341 | 4,171 | 4,275 |
| General administration | 1,797 | 1,760 | 1,851 | 1,854 | 1,908 | 1,958 | 2,046 | 2,256 | 2,383 | 2,649 | 3,025 |
| Pensions | 1,468 | 1,379 | 1,277 | 1,338 | 1,434 | 1,458 | 1,472 | 1,486 | 1,698 | 1,811 | 1,844 |
| Debt service | 1,132 | 1,018 | 1,007 | 982 | 954 | 882 | 829 | 833 | 888 | 1,063 | 1,063 |
| Community & environment | 175 | 164 | 180 | 185 | 229 | 208 | 262 | 281 | 279 | 294 | 266 |
| Grants & other | 643 | 593 | 571 | 569 | 658 | 730 | 866 | 905 | 898 | 688 | 504 |
| Total | 19,400 | 19,273 | 19,094 | 19,558 | 20,394 | 20,891 | 22,140 | 26,278 | 27,842 | 29,250 | 30,350 |
Social welfare rose from NT$460B to NT$832B and never left first place; the idea that welfare “overtook” education recently is wrong — it was already ahead in FY2016. Defense went from NT$309B to NT$549B and passed economic development in FY2026. Education, science and culture grew too, from NT$382B to NT$557B, but its share slipped from 19.7% to 18.3%.
The two flat bands are pensions and debt service: pensions moved from NT$147B to NT$184B, debt service stayed near NT$100B as interest rates and outstanding debt both fell. Community and environment, at NT$27B, is the thinnest band on the chart and the easiest to lose sight of.
Source: DGBAS, FY2026 Central Government General Budget general explanation, reference table 6 (歷年中央政府歲入歲出淨收支概況表). Basis differs by year as stated above; the FY2026 row will change once the post-passage table is published.
Same table, ten years: some bowls have doubled in size, some bowls are still the same bowl.
In ten years the Ministry of Labor and Ministry of Economic Affairs more than doubled; the Ministry of Finance shrank 14%
The same money cut by who is in charge of spending it. Bars are the FY2026 proposal (the post-passage table is not out yet), the dark tick is FY2016. Colour is only spent on two agencies — Defense and Culture — because they are the two this page keeps coming back to.
Budget by supervising agency: FY2026 proposal vs FY2016 legal (NT$100M)
Data table
| Agency | FY2016 | FY2026 (proposed) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ministry of National Defense | 3,201 | 5,614 | +75.4% |
| Ministry of Health and Welfare | 1,987 | 3,557 | +79.0% |
| Ministry of Labor | 1,168 | 2,971 | +154.3% |
| Ministry of Education Sports Admin. spun off as Ministry of Sports in FY2026; some grants reclassified after the Fiscal Allocation Act amendment | 2,253 | 2,659 | +18.0% |
| Grants to local governments Named 省市地方政府 in FY2016 | 1,626 | 2,501 | +53.8% |
| Ministry of Agriculture Council of Agriculture became a ministry in Aug 2023 | 1,218 | 1,722 | +41.4% |
| Ministry of Finance | 1,961 | 1,689 | -13.8% |
| Ministry of Transportation and Communications | 1,121 | 1,539 | +37.3% |
| Ministry of Economic Affairs | 590 | 1,480 | +150.9% |
| Veterans Affairs Council | 1,247 | 1,326 | +6.3% |
| Ministry of the Interior | 869 | 1,187 | +36.6% |
| National Science and Technology Council Ministry of Science and Technology became NSTC in Jul 2022 | 467 | 794 | +70.1% |
| Ministry of Justice | 317 | 508 | +60.2% |
| Examination Yuan | 264 | 419 | +58.4% |
| Ministry of Foreign Affairs | 244 | 415 | +69.9% |
| Executive Yuan (incl. councils) Includes NDC, MAC, CIP, HAC, DGBAS, DGPA, NCC, FTC, CEC, National Palace Museum etc. | 246 | 373 | +51.4% |
| Ocean Affairs Council Coast Guard Admin. moved under OAC in Apr 2018 | 141 | 340 | +140.8% |
| Judicial Yuan | 248 | 331 | +33.1% |
| Ministry of Culture | 165 | 273 | +64.9% |
| Office of the President | 170 | 172 | +1.2% |
| Ministry of Digital Affairs Established Aug 2022 | — | 104 | — |
| Ministry of Environment EPA became a ministry in Aug 2023 | 43 | 67 | +55.6% |
Labor rose from NT$117B to NT$297B, mostly transfers into the Labor Insurance fund (NT$130B in FY2024 alone). Economic Affairs went from NT$59B to NT$148B. Health and Welfare (+79%) and National Defense (+75%) grew by similar ratios but very different amounts: defense added NT$241B, the single largest increase of any ministry.
The Ministry of Culture grew 65%, from NT$16.5B to NT$27.3B, and still sits under 1% of the total (0.84% → 0.90%). Finance is the one large ministry that fell, −14%, as debt service and its share of transfers declined. Two rows need a footnote: Education (NT$361B → NT$266B) and Interior (NT$148B → NT$119B) drop in FY2026 because the amended Fiscal Allocation Act reclassified part of their local grants — the “grants to local governments” row rises from NT$187B to NT$250B in the same year.
Ten-year growth by agency, indexed FY2016 = 100
Data table
| Agency | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ministry of National Defense | 100 | 100 | 101 | 106 | 110 | 113 | 115 | 128 | 136 | 146 | 175 |
| Ministry of Health and Welfare | 100 | 105 | 109 | 112 | 116 | 125 | 138 | 185 | 170 | 186 | 179 |
| Ministry of Labor | 100 | 106 | 112 | 112 | 130 | 141 | 155 | 171 | 246 | 251 | 254 |
| Ministry of Education Sports Admin. spun off as Ministry of Sports in FY2026; some grants reclassified after the Fiscal Allocation Act amendment | 100 | 107 | 106 | 109 | 114 | 114 | 122 | 129 | 148 | 160 | 118 |
| Grants to local governments Named 省市地方政府 in FY2016 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 103 | 108 | 116 | 121 | 132 | 142 | 115 | 154 |
| Ministry of Agriculture Council of Agriculture became a ministry in Aug 2023 | 100 | 98 | 105 | 106 | 133 | 112 | 121 | 124 | 132 | 137 | 141 |
| Ministry of Finance | 100 | 94 | 93 | 88 | 86 | 88 | 88 | 91 | 90 | 87 | 86 |
| Ministry of Transportation and Communications | 100 | 98 | 68 | 70 | 66 | 63 | 71 | 92 | 106 | 135 | 137 |
| Ministry of Economic Affairs | 100 | 90 | 90 | 88 | 91 | 90 | 97 | 363 | 308 | 186 | 251 |
| Veterans Affairs Council | 100 | 94 | 93 | 99 | 103 | 102 | 104 | 102 | 104 | 105 | 106 |
| Ministry of the Interior | 100 | 96 | 97 | 95 | 72 | 74 | 91 | 144 | 128 | 170 | 137 |
| National Science and Technology Council Ministry of Science and Technology became NSTC in Jul 2022 | 100 | 108 | 85 | 91 | 90 | 88 | 102 | 110 | 125 | 147 | 170 |
| Ministry of Justice | 100 | 99 | 100 | 106 | 112 | 110 | 117 | 127 | 137 | 141 | 160 |
| Examination Yuan | 100 | 105 | 100 | 97 | 98 | 105 | 100 | 104 | 125 | 154 | 158 |
| Ministry of Foreign Affairs | 100 | 100 | 107 | 106 | 115 | 119 | 123 | 128 | 127 | 125 | 170 |
| Ministry of Culture | 100 | 114 | 108 | 119 | 118 | 107 | 107 | 124 | 157 | 169 | 165 |
Source: DGBAS, 歲出機關別預算總表 (supervising-agency totals), FY2016–FY2026. Renamed agencies (Council of Agriculture → Ministry of Agriculture, EPA → Ministry of Environment, MOST → NSTC, Coast Guard → Ocean Affairs Council) are one continuous series. FY2026 = Executive Yuan proposal; the NT$48B cut is not yet distributed by agency in any published table.
Eight years the blade fell near one percent; in the ninth, six percent in a single stroke; in the tenth the blade drew halfway back — but the calendar had turned to August.
The Legislative Yuan cut 1.0–1.25% for eight years, 6.6% in FY2025, and 1.6% in FY2026
The cut ratio is the cleanest political signal in this dataset. When the presidency and the legislative majority belonged to the same party — KMT in FY2016, DPP from FY2017 to FY2024 — the line is almost flat; under the KMT–TPP majority elected in 2024 it spikes, then falls back but not to the old band — and the passage date slides from December-before to August-after.
Share of proposed expenditure cut by the Legislative Yuan, FY2016–FY2026
Data table
| Year | Cut % |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 1.1% |
| 2017 | 1.2% |
| 2018 | 1.3% |
| 2019 | 1.2% |
| 2020 | 1.2% |
| 2021 | 1.2% |
| 2022 | 1.2% |
| 2023 | 1.1% |
| 2024 | 1.0% |
| 2025 | 6.6% |
| 2026 | 1.6% |
A cut deletes money for the year; a freeze keeps the line item but blocks spending until a committee lifts it. FY2025 had both at record scale: NT$207.6B cut (about NT$100B of it the Taipower subsidy) and roughly NT$260B frozen. The Executive Yuan asked for reconsideration; the Legislative Yuan rejected it on 12 March 2025.
FY2026’s NT$48B is a fifth of the previous year in money, but the across-the-board rules were sharper: special allowances cut 60% and fully removed for 20 agencies with no reallocation, publicity budgets cut 50%, overseas travel up to 70%, military equipment 2.5%. The 1.58% shown here is NT$48B over the NT$3.035T proposed; some reports use 1.689% against a different base.
Across-the-board items, FY2025 vs FY2026
| Item | Decision |
|---|---|
| cut Overseas travel, special allowances, media & policy publicity | 60% across-the-board cut ↗ |
| cut MOEA subsidy to Taipower | ~NT$100B ↗ |
| cut Control Yuan operating expenses | 96.5% cut ↗ |
| cut LY own operating expenses | 46% cut ↗ |
| cut MOC media publicity | NT$59.43M fully cut ↗ |
| Plus ~NT$260B frozen (single source: CCW) | |
| Item | Decision |
|---|---|
| cut Heads' special allowances | 60% cut; fully cut for 20 agencies incl. EY, Control Yuan, Judicial Yuan; no reallocation ↗ |
| cut Media & policy publicity | 50% cut except statutory items ↗ |
| cut Overseas travel | Up to 70% cut ↗ |
| cut Military equipment & facilities | 2.5% cut, MND allocates ↗ |
| frozen Premier's salary | Sep–Dec frozen (59–51 vote) ↗ |
| kept Drone industry & procurement | NT$63.4B fully retained ↗ |
| cut MOC media publicity | NT$47.38M fully cut (second year running) ↗ |
A budget stood outside the door for over three hundred days; the people inside counted the days, and every one of them counted a different number.
FY2026: sent in August 2025, passed 14 August 2026 — three ways to count the days
The Budget Act says the general budget should be decided a month before the fiscal year begins. For FY2026 that deadline was 30 November 2025. What happened between the Executive Yuan’s approval on 21 August 2025 and the third reading on 14 August 2026 depends on who is telling it — so here are the three counts, attributed.
Three counts of “how late”
Timeline, FY2025 and FY2026
- 2024-01-13Legislative election: DPP loses majority; KMT + TPP hold the floor
- 2025-01-21FY2025 budget passed: NT$207.6B cut (6.6%, record), ~NT$260B frozen ↗
- 2025-03-12LY rejects EY's reconsideration requests on the budget and the Fiscal Allocation Act ↗
- 2025-07-26Mass recall wave 1: all 24 KMT recall votes fail ↗
- 2025-08-21Cabinet approves FY2026 budget: NT$3.035T spending, NT$2.862T revenue ↗
- 2025-08-23Mass recall wave 2: all 7 fail ↗
- 2025-08-29FY2025 supplementary budget NT$81.9B passed ↗
- 2025-08-31FY2026 budget delivered to the LY (some sources say Aug 29) ↗
- 2025-09-30Premier, DGBAS and MOF report to the LY plenary on the budget ↗
- 2025-11-30Statutory deadline (one month before the fiscal year) passes; the bill is still not in committee ↗
- 2025-12-15Premier Cho declines to countersign the Fiscal Allocation Act amendment (a constitutional first)
- 2025-12-27Still stalled before New Year: opposition cites missing pay-raise budgets; EY says the laws are being challenged as unconstitutional ↗
- 2026-04-17Budget referred to committees (some say Apr 21) ↗
- 2026-07-02Education & Culture Committee reviews MOC: NT$47.38M publicity in focus, NT$8M frozen ↗
- 2026-07-21Visual Arts Alliance statement: "Chips make Taiwan needed; culture makes Taiwan understood" ↗
- 2026-08-14FY2026 budget passed: NT$48B cut (1.58%); latest passage on record ↗
- 2026-08-14EY lists "seven unreasonable resolutions"; Culture Minister Lee: "what is lost is Taiwan's voice in the world" ↗
- 2026-08-16KMT's Chang Ya-ping rebuts "351 days": 235 days stuck before committee, 115 days of actual review ↗
Culture and public media: FY2025 vs FY2026
| Item | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|
| MOC budget as proposed | NT$29.0B | NT$29.6B |
| cut Cut | NT$1.1B | ~NT$1.0B |
| frozen Frozen | NT$3.4B (30% of operating funds frozen across the board) | NT$386M |
| cut Media publicity | NT$59.43M fully cut | NT$47.38M fully cut (second year running; the only ministry fully cut) |
| cut/frozen PTS / TaiwanPlus | NT$243M cut (combined) | PTS cut NT$21.85M & NT$200M frozen; TaiwanPlus cut NT$200M |
| cut/frozen TAICCA | — | Over NT$100M cut/frozen |
| cut/frozen Public media total | — | Nearly NT$600M cut/frozen |
The Ministry of Culture’s media publicity line is NT$47.38M — 0.16% of the ministry’s NT$29.6B — and for two years running it has been the only ministry publicity budget cut to zero. The committee stage in July 2026 froze NT$8M; the floor vote in August deleted the whole line. Public Television lost NT$21.85M and had NT$200M frozen pending a new board chair; TaiwanPlus lost NT$200M; TAICCA over NT$100M cut or frozen.
Who says what
Executive Yuan / Ministry of Culture
- "What is lost is Taiwan's voice in the world and a channel to explain Taiwan's view of its own sovereignty." — Culture Minister Lee Yuan, 2026-08-14 ↗
- EY spokesperson Li Hui-chih lists seven "unreasonable resolutions": NCC's Aug–Dec operating funds fully cut, publicity budgets nearly halved, presidential state-affairs fund cut/frozen — 2026-08-14 ↗
- "Many unreasonable cut and freeze rationales negate everything the ministry has done and disrespect cultural workers." — MOC statement on the FY2025 budget ↗
Opposition (KMT / TPP)
- "From FY2008 to FY2025 the central budget took 104–152 days from submission to passage, median ~139. FY2026 got 115 days after referral — not abnormal, near the short end." — KMT's Chang Ya-ping, 2026-08-16 ↗
- "NT$48B over the proposed NT$3.035T is about 1.58%, below FY2013's 1.90%." — Chang Ya-ping, ibid. ↗
- Opposition caucuses' condition for referral in Dec 2025: the EY must budget for the military pay and police personnel acts as passed — CNA 2025-12-27 ↗
Cultural sector & third parties
- "Chips make Taiwan needed; culture makes Taiwan understood." "Oversight must not come at the cost of Taiwan's ability to speak." — Visual Arts Alliance, 2026-07-21 ↗
- "266 days... I plead with both sides to step back — the opposition to show mature oversight, the Executive Yuan to show respect for the rule of law." — Speaker Han Kuo-yu, 2026-08-14 ↗
Sources: CNA, LTN, UDN, RTI, Executive Yuan and Ministry of Culture press releases as linked per row in the data file. Figures for the Council of Indigenous Peoples, Hakka Affairs Council and CTS were not found in this research round and are not shown.
Of the money written down, ninety-seven parts in a hundred are truly spent; the rest is carry-over and what never got used.
Final-account execution ran 97–98% for nine straight years; the story hides in the denominator
The grey track is the legal budget, the blue bar is the final account audited later. Execution rate here is final ÷ legal, without supplementary budgets. It is a rate of spending, not a measure of whether the spending worked.
Legal budget vs final accounts, FY2016–FY2024 (NT$100M)
Data table
| Year | Budget (NT$100M) | Actual (NT$100M) | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 19,760 | 19,400 | 98.2% |
| 2017 | 19,740 | 19,273 | 97.6% |
| 2018 | 19,669 | 19,094 | 97.1% |
| 2019 | 19,980 | 19,558 | 97.9% |
| 2020 | 20,776 | 20,394 | 98.2% |
| 2021 | 21,359 | 20,891 | 97.8% |
| 2022 | 22,511 | 22,140 | 98.3% |
| 2023 | 26,891 | 26,278 | 97.7% |
| 2024 | 28,519 | 27,842 | 97.6% |
| 2025 | 29,250 | — | — |
| 2026 | 29,870 | — | — |
FY2025 is the textbook case for denominators: against the post-cut legal budget of NT$2.925T, the NT$2.934T final account looks like overspending; against the NT$3.007T available after the NT$81.9B supplementary budget, it is 97.6% executed. Same number, two stories.
And the general budget is not the whole purse. Special budgets — infrastructure, fighter jets, sea-air combat power, post-pandemic resilience — sit outside it, each with its own law and ceiling. Defense is where the confusion is loudest: the “3.32% of GDP” figure bundles the MND budget with veterans’ pensions, coast guard, special budgets and special funds.
One defense number, four pieces (FY2026, NT$100M)
NATO-basis total 9,495 · 3.32% GDP
- MND budget：5,614
- Veterans pensions + Coast Guard：1,359
- Special budgets (F-16V 399 + sea-air 293 + other 1,176)：1,868
- Special funds：654
Special budgets outside the general budget
Forward-looking Infrastructure
Period 2017–2025
Phase 1 NT$107.1B, 2 NT$223B, 3 NT$229.8B, 4 NT$209.8B (98.7% executed), 5 FY2025 NT$66.6B; statutory cap NT$420B
↗
F-16V fighter procurement
Period 2020–2026
Cap NT$250B
↗
Sea-Air Combat Power Enhancement
Period 2022–2026
NT$237.27B; FY2024 budget utilization 98.25%, contracting rate 93.5% (two different metrics)
↗
Post-pandemic resilience & shared prosperity
Period 2023–2025
Final accounts NT$369B spent, NT$10.9B unspent (~97.0%)
↗
Economic, social & national security resilience
Period 2025–2027
FY2025–27; FY2026 borrowing NT$299.2B (general) + NT$100.8B (special)
↗
Sources: Executive Yuan final-account press releases FY2020–FY2025; DGBAS FY2026 general explanation; MyGoPen fact-check on the 9,495 breakdown; CNA on the sea-air special budget. Special budget amounts marked as “cap” or “phase” are statutory or per-phase figures, not cumulative spending.
Every number on this page has a twin that is also true. Before you argue, ask which one you are holding.
How to read this table: six pairs that get mixed up
Proposed / legal / final
Three moments of one budget: what the Executive Yuan asked for, what the Legislative Yuan passed, what was actually spent. “NT$3.03T” is the FY2026 proposal; the legal figure is NT$2.99T. Headlines mix them freely.
Cut / frozen
A cut is gone for the year. A freeze keeps the money on the books but requires a report to committee before it can be spent — most FY2025 freezes were later lifted. Both are called “砍” in the news.
General budget / special budget / special fund
This page is the general budget. Fighter jets, infrastructure and pandemic relief live in special budgets with their own laws. Defense at NT$949.5B is a NATO-basis sum across all three; the general-budget defense line is NT$548.8B.
Nominal / % of GDP / per person
Up 51% in ten years sounds like a lot; as a share of GDP it is flat around 10%. Per person, NT$2.99T is roughly NT$128,000 a year for each of Taiwan’s 23.3 million residents.
By agency / by function
The Ministry of Culture is NT$29.6B; the “education, science and culture” function is NT$556.6B because it counts universities, research and every school. Ask which cut a number refers to before comparing.
Execution rate / effectiveness
97% spent means the money left the treasury, not that it bought what was promised. Taiwan publishes execution rates every year and effectiveness reviews only for some programmes; this page shows the first and does not pretend to the second.
Sources and method
All amounts are NT$100 million (億). Agency and function tables were downloaded as DGBAS xls/xlsx and PDF originals and normalised without hand-editing; totals reconcile to the official total row within rounding. Curated items (events, cuts, quotes) each carry a source URL in the data file. Charts are inline SVG rendered at build time; every chart has a data table beneath it.
- DGBAS Central Government General Budget, expenditure by agency FY2016–2026 (original xls/xlsx)
- DGBAS FY2026 budget general explanation, reference tables 4 & 6
- DGBAS press releases on LY review results, each fiscal year
- Executive Yuan final-account press releases FY2020–2025
- National Treasury Administration, government debt tables
- CNA 2026-08-14 on the FY2026 passage
- CNA 2025-01-21 on the FY2025 passage
- Budget Act, Articles 51 & 54
Data as of 2026-08-17