Lawmakers in Japan’s lower house OK budget

TOKYO — Japan’s lower house of parliament on Saturday approved a 112.57 trillion yen ($750 billion) budget for fiscal year 2024, with record allocations made for social security costs and controversial military spending.

The budget, although smaller than the record 114.38 trillion yen allocated for the current fiscal year to March, is still the second-largest, underscoring the urgency for debtridden Japan to rein in spending and restore its fiscal health.

Running contrary to Japan’s constitutionally bound pacifist stance, a record military spending of 7.95 trillion yen was proposed in the draft budget, as part of the government’s plans to bolster its military capabilities, with its broader five-year plan continuing to draw staunch criticism from the public, opposition parties and scholars.

Due to Japan’s declining birthrate and rapidly aging population, social security costs included in the draft budget for the fiscal period from April 2024 to March 2025 ballooned to a record 37.72 trillion yen, the largest amount ever, according to the plan, which also stressed subsidies for companies to raise salaries amid inflation.

To deal with the aftermath of the Noto Peninsula earthquake that devastated central Japan on New Year’s Day, the government doubled the amount of emergency funds to 1 trillion yen by revising the budget it endorsed in December.

The lower house, controlled by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and its coalition partner Komeito, cleared the bill after deliberations in the Budget Committee, in which the opposition grilled the premier over the party’s political funds scandal, according to local media reports.

The budget proposal has been sent to the House of Councilors, and the ruling and opposition parties have agreed to start deliberation on Monday.

Enactment of the budget is now certain, local media reported, as the ruling bloc also dominates the upper house, and the Constitution mandates that a budget is enacted 30 days after approval by the lower house in the event of unresolved differences between the two chambers.

Kishida last week became Japan’s first sitting prime minister to appear before a parliamentary ethics committee, as he sought to draw a line under a funding scandal that has hurt his popularity.

Support for Kishida and the LDP has dipped to its lowest since he took the top post in 2021, with his approval at 25 percent and support for the LDP around 30 percent, according to a poll last month by the public broadcaster NHK.