BERLIN, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- The German Ministry of Defense and its subordinate authorities and companies spent a total of 155 million euros (173.7 million U.S. dollars) on external advice and support in the first half of the year, according to a ministry response to an inquiry by Left party politician Matthias Hoehn on Thursday.
In breakdown, the German defense ministry and its subordinated authorities spent almost 40 million euros on external consulting and support services while just under 116 million euros were spent by the ministry's seven federally owned companies in the "business area" during this period, according to a response sent to Xinhua.
The ministry noted that just under 116 million euros were spent by its seven federally owned companies in the "business area" during the first half of 2019.
The BWI, the IT service provider of the German armed forces and the German government, accounted for around 109 million euros of this total.
German Parliamentary State Secretary for Defense, Thomas Silberhorn, justified the high expenditure primarily with the growing challenges posed by digitization.
The "future topics of digitization and its restructuring as well as cybersecurity and defense" were the major focuses of the German defense ministry, Silberhorn wrote in the response.
"The identified need for action goes beyond the current capacities both quantitatively and qualitatively," Silberhorn said.
Hoehn called the defense ministry's expenditure on external consultants "scandalous".
Former German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen "turned the Bundeswehr into an El Dorado for external advisors", Hoehn told the German Press Agency.
Back in July, at the request of Hoehn, the German Ministry of Finance had previously calculated the expenditures on external advisors by the individual government ministries.
According to the calculations, the total expenditures for external advisors in all German ministries except for the defense ministry amounted to 178 million euros in the first half of 2019.
Since the start of the year, an investigative committee of the Bundestag had been set up to examine the defense ministry's use of external consultants following reports by the German audit office that the ministry had violated regulations in the use of such services.
