Japan gov’t budget clears Lower House

March 1, 2018

Tokyo - The Japanese government's fiscal 2018 budget bill passed through the House of Representatives on Wednesday, making it almost certain to be enacted before the April 1 start of the year with or without approval by the House of Councillors.

The Lower House approved the budget bill, which calls for record general-account spending of 97,712.8 billion yen, by a majority vote of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner, Komeito.

The Upper House, also controlled by the LDP-Komeito coalition, is expected to support the budget. If the upper chamber fails to vote on it within 30 days, the Lower House's decision will become final, under the country's constitution.

The Upper House Budget Committee will start deliberating the budget bill on Thursday.

The budget features measures under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's initiative for human resources development and productivity improvement.

"Early budget enactment is the largest economic stimulus measure," Abe told reporters after the Lower House vote.

It is very regrettable that the budget bill was put to a vote at a time when many issues remained unresolved, Yukio Edano, leader of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan said, apparently referring to a flawed labor ministry survey among others.

Opposition parties tried to block the Lower House vote on the budget bill on Wednesday, including by submitting a motion to dismiss Takeo Kawamura from the post of chairman of the Lower House Budget Committee for unilaterally setting the panel's voting, which preceded the balloting in the full chamber.

The full Lower House rejected the motion before the vote on the budget bill.

The opposition camp hardened its stance after the government and the ruling bloc earlier this week rejected its demand to conduct the labor survey again following the recent discovery of data flaws in the survey report. Jiji Press