(CN) — Norway will allocate 2 billion Norwegian kroner (around $190 million) to increase local arms production to meet demands from the war in Ukraine, the government announced Wednesday.
Half of the money will go to projects at Nammo, a Norwegian aerospace and defense company specializing in ammunition, to boost artillery production, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in a news release.
“Increasing capacity in the defense industry is important, both for Ukraine, but also to safeguard our own security,” said Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram. “We are now contributing to Nammo's production capacity increasing significantly to cover Norwegian, allied and Ukrainian needs.”
The second half of the investment will go to other projects in the country's defense industry, according to the news release, which gave no details.
Nammo asked for government support in the fall of 2022 to meet demand as large ammunition orders piled up due to the war in Ukraine. NATO, of which Norway is a founding member, urges its member states to increase their arms production capacity.
Opposition politicians are demanding that the funding go exclusively toward production for Ukraine, since the money is taken from the Nansen program, a Parliament-approved, multiyear economic support package for the invaded country.
The Conservative Party's Ine Eriksen Søreide, chair of the Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, told the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv that the funding is necessary but long overdue.
“The Conservative Party has pressured the government for one and a half years, and proposed concrete allocations for increased production capacity for Nammo, but the governing parties have voted down all proposals,” Søreide said.
The funding comes after last month's announcement that Norway would invest one billion kroner (roughly $95 million) to increase weapons production capacity by co-financing an EU program. ASAP, or “Act in Support of Ammunition Production,” aims to increase the continent’s weapon production with a scope of 500 million euros ($543 million).
In October 2023, the EU Commission called for five proposals to fund and improve European arms production using the program's pool of resources.
They will announce the selected companies in February, with Norway hoping that multiple businesses from its local arms industry will get funding. The awards could expand the country's defense production sector by several billion kroner, the government has said.
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