Japan ruling bloc Aims to Start FY ’19 budget talks Friday

February 2, 2019

Tokyo--Japan's ruling bloc hopes to start substantial deliberations on the government's budget proposal for fiscal 2019 at the Diet, the country's parliament, Friday, informed sources have said.

Opposition parties, however, seek to hold intensive Diet discussions on the government's unfolding statistics scandal prior to the budget talks.

The two sides have basically agreed on an early vote on the second supplementary draft budget for fiscal 2018 through March.

The draft will be put to a vote at the House of Representatives on Tuesday after two-day debates at the lower chamber's Budget Committee from Monday to be attended by all cabinet members including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

This will be followed by two-day talks at the Budget Committee of the House of Councillors. The upper chamber is seen passing the supplementary budget Thursday.

The ruling bloc plans to move on to deliberations on the fiscal 2019 budget after that.

The camp wants to pass the fiscal 2019 budget through the Lower House by March 2 to ensure that it is enacted by the end of the current fiscal year. The constitution stipulates that a draft budget that passed the lower chamber be enacted automatically 30 days after being sent to the Upper House.

But the current Diet session, called after Abe's oversees trip, has a tight schedule. The number of weekdays available before March 2 will be 15 if the supplementary budget is enacted as the ruling bloc plans.

"We are on a tightrope," said a senior official of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. "Discussions will easily hit a deadlock if any problem comes out."

At a recent meeting of their Diet affairs chiefs, the LDP and the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan agreed to hold intensive discussions on government survey irregularities at the Lower House Budget Committee.

The CDPJ will demand that the intensive talks be held before fiscal 2019 budget deliberations. A senior CDPJ official said that the full disclosure of the statistics problem should precede the budget discussions.

A series of flaws have been found in key government statistics since the discovery of irregularities in the monthly labor survey late last year.

Opposition parties are seen stepping up their attack on Abe's administration ahead of unified local elections in April and the Upper House election in summer. Jiji Press