Gov't hits snag in raising money from extra budget for its policies+

TOKYO, Oct. 2 Kyodo -
Japan's new government is experiencing increasing difficulties in financing its
key policies, according to findings by Kyodo News, as ministries on Friday
faced a major deadline to report expenditure savings from the fiscal 2009 extra
budget.

So far, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Cabinet is expected to salvage around 2
trillion yen from the already approved 14.7 trillion yen extra budget, well
below the roughly 3 trillion yen it has targeted.
How much money the Hatoyama administration will be able to redirect from the
extra budget -- crafted earlier this year by the previous administration -- for
some of its own policies is being seen as the first litmus test for judging its
ability to hold the reins of government.
From next week, the Democratic Party of Japan-led government will sort out
figures reported by ministries and look into whether there is more room for it
to cut wasteful spending, ruling party lawmakers said.
Yoshito Sengoku, state minister in charge of administrative reform, told
reporters at the premier's office that the Cabinet may come up with the final
sum of expenditure savings by the end of next week.
The Liberal Democratic Party-led government prepared the largest-ever extra
budget to carry out a range of stimulus programs it thought would be most
effective to help the economy recover.
Ministries and agencies have been asked by the DPJ-led government, launched on
Sept. 16, to review their past budget allocations and help it to redirect
earmarked funds as much as possible to its key policies, including monthly
allowances for families with children and scrapping expressway tolls.
Given that the current amount is smaller than the target, the Cabinet is likely
to press central government offices to find more money by stopping some
programs already under way.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Friday during an interview that
the government wants to complete overhauling the extra budget by Oct. 15.
The government had no plans to disclose on Friday the total amount of
expenditures it could scrape together from the supplementary budget.
==Kyodo
2009-10-02 23:50:16