After years of public, and government, pressure, the armed forces will sell off their commercial enterprises over the next two years. The businesses, worth several hundred million dollars, were first acquired in 1958 when the government seized hundreds of businesses belonging to Dutch citizens. The government passed a law last year forcing the military businesses to be sold by 2009, but the military decided to speed up the process and get it over with. The business enterprises have always been a distraction for military officers, and a source of corruption. While the income from the businesses helped keep the defense budget lower *by supplying 70 percent of the money), they also kept military readiness, and effectiveness, down as well.