Japan Diet Enacts 8.56-T.-Yen Stopgap Budget

Tokyo, March 30 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s Diet enacted on Monday a stopgap state budget to cover expenditures for the first 11 days of fiscal 2026, which begins Wednesday. The stopgap budget, with 8,564.1 billion yen in general-account spending, was approved at a plenary meeting of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, after being given the green light by the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, at its plenary meeting earlier on Monday. Meanwhile, the government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has given up on passing the government’s fiscal 2026 regular budget before the start of the new fiscal year. The regular budget passed the Lower House on March 13 and is now being debated at the Upper House, where the LDP and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, lack a majority. The budget will automatically be enacted April 12, even without a vote at the Upper House, due to the Lower House’s constitutional supremacy. Yoshihiko Isozaki, the LDP’s Diet affairs chief in the Upper House, met with his counterpart Yoshitaka Saito of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan on Monday and informed him of the ruling party’s decision to give up on taking a vote on the fiscal 2026 regular budget by the end of fiscal 2025 on Tuesday. Isozaki asked Saito for cooperation for the budget’s enactment by Friday. The CDP official rejected the request, demanding that an intensive deliberation be held at the Upper House Budget Committee with the participation of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who is also president of the LDP. Still, Isozaki and Saito agreed that Upper House committees concerned will hold in-depth deliberations on the regular budget on Wednesday and Thursday. Before the Lower House plenary meeting, Takaichi, who had aimed for the full budget’s enactment within fiscal 2025, told a Lower House Budget Committee meeting that the government has decided to compile the stopgap budget in case the fiscal 2026 budget fails to be enacted by the end of this fiscal year. It is the first time in 11 years that the government has compiled a stopgap budget. Of the expenditures under the provisional budget, 2,756.5 billion yen will finance social security measures, such as public pension and welfare benefit payments. It also includes 47.7 billion yen and 14.9 billion yen for making high school education and elementary school lunches free, respectively. Revenue is estimated at 64.4 billion yen, including tax revenue, with the shortfall to be covered with the issuance of financing bills. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]