Japan FY 2025 Extra Budget Certain to Be Enacted

Tokyo, Dec. 10 (Jiji Press)–The Japanese government’s fiscal 2025 draft supplementary budget is now certain to be enacted during the ongoing extraordinary session of the Diet, or parliament, which ends Dec. 17, as two opposition parties are set to support it. “We’ll vote in favor of the draft budget,” Democratic Party for the People chief Yuichiro Tamaki told reporters Wednesday, welcoming the government’s adoption of the opposition party’s proposals, including scrapping the provisional gasoline tax surcharge. Komeito, which dissolved its coalition with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in October and is now in the opposition camp, has notified the ruling side of its intention to back the budget plan, following the inclusion of its proposal to pay an additional child allowance of 20,000 yen per child in the draft. Although Komeito is currently in talks with the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan to submit a motion to modify the draft budget, the party plans to vote for the budget even if the motion is rejected. According to a senior Komeito official, many party members said at a meeting Wednesday that the party should back the budget bill. The LDP and its new coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, also known as Nippon Ishin no Kai, plan to pass the draft budget at the House of Representatives, the Diet’s lower chamber, where they hold a combined majority, Thursday and send it to the House of Councillors, the upper chamber. At Wednesday’s meeting of the board of the Lower House Budget Committee, the ruling and opposition parties agreed that the draft budget will be put to a vote at the committee Thursday and then at a plenary meeting of the Lower House later that day. The support from the DPFP and Komeito means that the draft supplementary budget will also clear the Upper House, where the ruling bloc lacks a majority. The budget bill calls for general-account spending of 18,303.4 billion yen to finance a recently adopted economic stimulus package, the first under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office in October. With over 60 pct of the budget set to be funded with revenue from the issuance of new Japanese government bonds, however, concerns grew that Japan’s fiscal condition would deteriorate further. CDP Secretary-General Jun Azumi expressed opposition to the supplementary budget, saying at a press conference Wednesday, “We can’t support the draft budget because it contains many nonurgent spending items.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]