Japanese ministries have requested substantially more spending for the next fiscal year, with some major items still unresolved and investors focused on how large the final budget will become, and how the government will pay for it.
Ministries sought ?143.1 trillion ($908 billion) in total for the fiscal year starting in April, the Finance Ministry said Friday. That topped last year’s ?122 trillion in requests. It also exceeded ?140.6 trillion, the combined size of this year’s ?122 trillion initial budget and last year’s ?18.3 trillion extra budget — a comparison cited by the ministry as the most apt given changes to the budgeting process.
“So the increase is about ?2.5 trillion, and I don’t think it’s accurate to characterize that as significant,” Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said in a briefing on Friday.
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