Supplementary budget to deal with oil price hikes gives priority to military

   Akahata learned that the government is planning to use for military purposes more than 20 percent of the budget allocated for urgent measures to deal with oil price hikes in the FY 2007 draft supplementary budget.

   The government on December 11 last year adopted basic policies to deal with the skyrocketing oil prices and is planning to include expenditures for such measures in both the FY 2007 draft supplementary budget and the FY 2008 draft budget.

   Out of 57 billion yen that the government is requesting for such measures in the FY 2007 draft supplementary budget, 12.4 billion yen will be used by the Self-Defense Forces.

   To support fishers faced with grave difficulties in continuing fishing operations due to increases in fuel prices, the government allocated 10.2 billion yen, 2.2 billion yen less than the budget allocated for the SDF.

   The budgets to address the oil price hikes also include 23 billion yen to expand programs of the Japan Finance Corporation for Small and Medium Enterprise to support small- and medium sized companies as well as 6.7 billion yen to lower expressway tolls.
- Akahata, January 20, 2008