TOKYO- Japan’s government is set to unveil its largest annual budget on Friday with $943 billion in spending for the fiscal year beginning next April, further straining the industrial world’s heaviest debt, a draft plan seen by Reuters showed.
The first annual budget to be compiled by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government got a boost from COVID-19 countermeasures, social security spending to support a fast-ageing population and the biggest-ever military outlays to deal with threats from China.
The 107.6 trillion yen ($943 billion) annual budget for the 2022 fiscal year underscores the challenge Kishida faces as he tries to realize “new capitalism” with a cycle of growth and wealth distribution and restore tattered public finances.
“Together with the extra budget approved by parliament earlier, this budget serves as part of (a) 16-month budget aimed at achieving new capitalism while responding to the coronavirus,” Kishida told a meeting of ruling party and government officials.
“I want to see swift parliament approval of this budget so that we can deliver measures quickly.”
The next fiscal year’s budget would mark a 1 percent rise in spending from this year’s initial plan, up for a 10th straight year.
From Europe to America, policymakers globally are unwinding crisis-mode stimulus but Japan’s fragile economic recovery has kept it from following suit, straining public debt that tops twice the size of its economy. – Reuters
