Gov’t submits FY 2018 budget plan to Diet

January 22, 2018

Tokyo- The government submitted to the Diet, Japan's parliament, on Monday its budget plan for fiscal 2018 that features record general-account spending of 97,712.8 billion yen.

The budget includes measures aimed at boosting human resource development and productivity, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's key policy initiatives.

The budget plan was presented on the first day of a 150-day regular session of the Diet. The government aims to pass it before the start of fiscal 2018 on April 1.

The size of the general-account budget is up 0.3 percent from the fiscal 2017 initial budget.

The government also submitted to the Diet a 2,707.3-billion-yen fiscal 2017 supplementary budget proposal partly to finance costs for reconstruction in areas devastated by the heavy rain that hit the northern part of the Kyushu southwestern Japan region in July last year.

The extra budget is also intended to cover costs for supporting domestic farmers that would be affected by an economic partnership agreement between Japan and the European Union.

The fiscal 2018 budget includes 58,895.8 billion yen in general spending on policy measures, up 0.9 percent.

Costs related to social security services, such as medical and nursing care, grow 1.5 percent to 32,973.2 billion yen due to the country's aging population.

The government managed to limit the size of annual growth in social security costs to 500 billion yen as targeted in its fiscal reconstruction program, mainly by sharply cutting drug prices.

The budget projects the government's tax revenue in fiscal 2018 to rise 2.4 percent to 59,079 billion yen, the highest level in 27 years, thanks mainly to a rise in income tax.

New government bond issues are set at 33,692.2 billion yen, down 2 percent and falling for the eighth straight year. Jiji Press