Government budgetary guidelines shows its inability to meet real needs

Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro's cabinet on August 7 approved the Finance Ministry's guidelines for the fiscal 2003 (Apr. 2003-Mar. 2004) budget setting the ceiling of 48.1 trillion yen in expenditure.

Fudesaka Hideyo, Japanese Communist Party Policy Commission Chair, commented on the decision on the same day as follows:

The government guidelines only suggest its inability to deal with the nation's serious economic situation.

The government has put forward a one-trillion yen tax reduction, apparently in response to the present real economy, which is too serious to turn around. It also insists on asking the people to pay an additional three trillion yen for medical care and other social services.

The tax cut plan will only benefit major corporations in the black and the wealthy through cutting corporate tax, inheritance tax, and financial income tax. In return for these tax cuts, a mass tax increase is being planned by the government. Such a policy will deteriorate Japan's economic activities, far from rehabilitating them.

The budget guidelines call for cuts in expenditure for social services and compulsory education. Using falls in prices as a pretext, the government is trying to cut expenditure for publicly-funded pensions and other public assistance programs, and benefits for pre-school children and physically and mentally handicapped children.

The guidelines only call for a three percent cut in spending on public works projects from the fiscal 2002 budget to about 9 trillion yen. After all, the cut only corresponds to deflationary price falls and will not help reduce wasteful public works projects at all.

The guidelines also preserve a huge amount of money for the Self-Defense Forces in the name of "compulsory expenditure" on the grounds that money for munitions need to be earmarked for later years. The need now, however, is for Japan to substantially reduce the world's second largest military budget. (end)