Japan Govt Budget Passage by Fiscal Year-End Unlikely

Tokyo, March 25 (Jiji Press)–There appears to be only a slim chance that the Japanese government’s fiscal 2026 regular budget will be enacted before fiscal 2025 ends on Tuesday, despite Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s strong push to meet the deadline. The draft budget has cleared the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, the country’s parliament, but its fate is highly uncertain in the House of Councillors, the upper chamber, where the ruling camp led by the Liberal Democratic Party is a minority force. The LDP, headed by Takaichi, has entered final-stage negotiations with the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan in an effort to secure the budget’s enactment. To allow more time for budget deliberations, the LDP proposed holding sessions over the coming weekend. In response, the CDP demanded that the LDP abandon its plan to pass the budget bill by the fiscal year-end and called for debates on a provisional budget bill. On Tuesday, senior members of the Upper House, including Masaji Matsuyama, head of LDP members in the chamber, and CDP leader Shunichi Mizuoka, held discussions on the matter. “We want to have the budget enacted on March 31, even if it requires Saturday and Sunday deliberations,” Matsuyama said. However, in a subsequent meeting, the CDP rejected the idea, calling the possible passage “unprecedented and difficult.” The LDP proposed holding budget deliberations on Thursday and Friday, but the CDP agreed to meet only on Friday. Although opposition parties are calling for more than 60 hours of budget deliberations, the total is expected to reach only about 39 hours by the end of this week. A senior LDP official acknowledged the difficulty, saying, “It’s quite challenging to enact the budget within this fiscal year.” Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said at Thursday’s cabinet meeting, “We want to advance the preparation of a provisional budget to be ready for unforeseen circumstances.” The LDP told the CDP that if a provisional budget is submitted to the Diet, the ruling party aims to have both chambers deliberate and pass it in a single day. With no clear prospect of the Upper House passing the regular budget, majority-building efforts are intensifying. The opposition Democratic Party for the People decided at its executive committee meeting Tuesday to submit a proposal to revise the budget bill by adding about 2 trillion yen in funding for measures to counter rising energy prices. Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Upper House Budget Committee’s board members on Tuesday, education minister Yohei Matsumoto submitted a document explaining his past extramarital affair following a request from opposition parties. The submission was a requirement for deliberations on a bill to make high school tuition free, one of bills with a fiscal year-end deadline for enactment. However, the opposition deemed the explanation insufficient, leaving the start of substantive deliberations on the bill, planned on Friday, unconfirmed. Discussions will continue on the handling of the bill. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]