TOKYO: Japan’s House of Representatives passed the fiscal 2024 state budget bill Saturday afternoon, making it certain to be enacted before the current fiscal year ends this month.

The budget bill was approved at a plenary meeting of the lower chamber of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, by a majority vote with support mainly from the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito.

It was sent to the House of Councillors, the upper chamber, and will be enacted within fiscal 2023 even without an Upper House vote, given the Lower House’s superiority stipulated in the Constitution. Deliberations in the Upper House will begin Monday.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan agreed to put the budget bill to a vote in the Lower House after the LDP vowed to continue deliberations at the Lower House’s Deliberative Council on Political Ethics over a high-profile political funds scandal involving LDP factions and set up in the Lower House a special committee for political reform.

The special committee, which is expected to be created by expanding an existing special committee related to political ethics, will discuss an amendment to the political funds control law in response to the LDP funds scandal.
The LDP and the CDP also agreed to hold intensive deliberations at the budget committees of both Diet chambers in April or later.

The two sides will continue to discuss the opposition camp’s request to summon former LDP policy leader SHIMOMURA Hakubun and others to speak in the Diet about the funds scandal as unsworn witnesses.

“We will continue to press the issue of money and politics,” CDP Diet affairs chief AZUMI Jun told reporters. He added that according to the LDP, about five people are saying they want to speak before the ethics panel.

On Saturday morning, the Lower House Budget Committee resumed intensive deliberations on the budget bill.

After the closing question-and-answer session, the committee approved the bill and submitted it to the Lower House plenary session.

Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio and all cabinet ministers will attend a meeting of the Upper House Budget Committee Monday and Tuesday for basic deliberations on the budget bill.

Under the budget bill, the total general-account spending is put at 112,571.7 billion yen for the year starting in April, the second largest ever, including reconstruction and restoration costs for the Jan. 1 Noto Peninsula earthquake in central Japan.

The budget’s enactment would be “indispensable” for rebuilding the daily lives and livelihoods of people affected by the major earthquake, Kishida told reporters.

“If it is not certain that the budget will be enacted by the end of this fiscal year, disaster-stricken local governments have to make preparations” for the consequences of such a development, the prime minister said, stressing the significance of the budget bill’s Lower House passage on Saturday.

The LDP aimed to send the budget bill to the Upper House on Friday, but the CDP opposed the plan, saying that not enough deliberations have been made on the bill. The opposition party countered by submitting a motion to dismiss Lower House Budget Committee Chairman ONODERA Itsunori and a no-confidence motion against Finance Minister SUZUKI Shunichi, and the Lower House vote was delayed to Saturday as a result. It is unusual for a budget bill to be discussed during the day on Saturday.

JIJI Press