The Japanese government is set to issue bonds worth 6,690 billion yen ($44 billion) in fiscal 2024,
to finance nearly half of a supplementary budget with general-account expenditure of 13,943.3 billion yen, local media reported on Thursday (Nov. 28).
The budget is being compiled to pay for an economic stimulus package aimed at cushioning the blow to low-income households from rising prices. The economic package also includes energy subsidies and measures to support central Japan areas affected by the Noto Peninsula earthquake in January this year.
Contrary to other advanced nations that have phased out crisis-mode stimulus, Japan continues to compile big spending packages to bolster the struggling economy.
To fund the package, the government plans to utilise a 3,827 billion yen surplus resulting from tax revenues, mainly resulting from strong corporate earnings. The remaining 10.1 trillion yen will be covered by issuing additional government bonds, soures said.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s administration is expected to approve the fiscal 2024 supplementary budget on Friday (Nov. 28). The budget bill will then be submitted to an extraordinary Diet session, which was convened Thursday for a 24-day run, in early December so that it can be enacted by the end of this year.
The outstanding amount of government general bonds in Japan is planned to reach approximately 1.1 quadrillion Japanese yen by the end of the 2024 fiscal year, twice the size of Japan’s economy and the largest among advanced nations, according to Statista. The overall outstanding amount of general bonds issued by the central government leaped by about 60 trillion from fiscal 2019 to 2020.
