Japan’s fiscal 2022 budget requests total record 1 trillion USD

TOKYO, Sept. 7– Budget requests by Japanese ministries and agencies for fiscal 2022 totaled 111.66 trillion yen, marking an all-time high for the fourth year in a row, the Japanese Finance Ministry said on Tuesday. The figure for fiscal 2022 exceeded 110 trillion yen for the first time with increasing debt-serving and social security costs, suggesting that the…

TOKYO, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) — Budget requests by Japanese ministries and agencies for fiscal 2022 totaled 111.66 trillion yen (1 trillion U.S. dollars), marking an all-time high for the fourth year in a row, the Japanese Finance Ministry said on Tuesday.

The figure for fiscal 2022 exceeded 110 trillion yen for the first time with increasing debt-serving and social security costs, suggesting that the next fiscal year’s initial general-account budget could go beyond the 106.61 trillion yen for fiscal 2021, which included 5 trillion yen set aside for curbing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Finance Ministry would assess the requests and try to finish compiling by the end of the year the initial draft budget for fiscal 2022 for deliberations at an ordinary Diet session to be convened early next year.

Japan has stayed with the goal to turn the primary balance, tax revenue minus expenses other than debt-servicing costs, into the black by fiscal 2025. However, the forecast budget seemed to have pushed the country further from the goal.

Breaking down the total amount, the largest request came from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, which asked for 33.95 trillion yen, the most ever by a ministry or agency. Spending on medical and nursing care as well as other social security programs kept rising as the population ages.

The debt-servicing costs requested went up significantly to a record 30.24 trillion yen, rising around 6.48 trillion yen from the fiscal 2021 initial budget, while requests for policy spending stood at 81.42 trillion yen, larger than the 77.85 trillion yen for the current fiscal year’s budget.

Meanwhile, the budget request from the Defense Ministry rose to a record 5.45 trillion yen.

The Japanese government had set aside about 4.4 trillion yen as special reserves for ministries and agencies to promote policies such as decarbonization and digitalization, and ministries and agencies in total requested 4.37 trillion yen from the reserves. (1 U.S. dollar equals 109.94 Japanese yen) Enditem