Japan Diet Passes FY 2026 Govt Budget

Tokyo, April 7 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s Diet, or parliament, passed the government’s fiscal 2026 budget Tuesday, marking the first time in 11 years that a regular budget has been enacted after the April 1 start of a fiscal year. The budget was approved by a majority vote at a plenary meeting of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet. It cleared the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, last month. While the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, are four seats short of an Upper House majority, two members of the opposition Conservative Party of Japan, a lawmaker linked to Team Mirai, also an opposition party, and three unaffiliated lawmakers voted for the budget, helping its enactment. “It is regrettable that we failed to enact the budget by the end of fiscal 2025,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told reporters after the passage. But she emphasized, “We were able to reduce the risk of disruption to people’s lives as much as possible.” “I don’t think it’s necessary to compile a fiscal 2026 supplementary budget right now,” Takaichi said, pointing out that the government has reserve funds under the full budget. The full fiscal 2026 budget features record general-account spending of 122,309.2 billion yen, in line with Takaichi’s advocacy of “responsible and proactive” fiscal policy. The expenditures include 39,055.9 billion yen for social security measures and 31,275.8 billion yen for debt-servicing costs, as well as spending to make high school education and elementary school lunches free. Earlier on Tuesday, the Upper House Budget Committee held intensive deliberations and a concluding question-and-answer session with the prime minister in attendance. As the committee’s vote on the budget resulted in a tie, its chairman, Masahito Fujikawa of the LDP, decided on its passage through the budget panel. The budget was then sent to the Upper House plenary meeting. An amendment budget proposal submitted by the pair of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito, and another from the Democratic Party for the People were both rejected. Diet deliberations on the budget started in late February, about a month later than usual due to a Lower House dissolution in late January and a subsequent general election. As Takaichi, who heads the LDP, was determined to secure the enactment of the budget within fiscal 2025, which ended last month, the ruling parties drastically shortened deliberations in the Lower House by using their dominance in the all-important parliamentary chamber. The ruling camp eventually gave up on passing the budget by March 31 as the opposition parties, which hold a combined majority in the Upper House, called for in-depth deliberations in the chamber. Under such circumstances, the government compiled a stopgap budget, which cleared the Diet on March 30. It was intended to cover the period through Saturday, but will lapse and be absorbed into the full budget. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]