Japan Diet Enacts 8.56-T.-Yen Stopgap Budget

Tokyo, March 30 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Diet enacted on Monday a stopgap state budget to cover expenditures for the first 11 days of fiscal 2026, which begins Wednesday.

The stopgap budget, with 8,564.1 billion yen in general-account spending, was approved at a plenary meeting of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament, after being given the green light by the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, at its plenary meeting earlier on Monday.

Meanwhile, the government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has given up on passing the government's fiscal 2026 regular budget before the start of the new fiscal year.

The regular budget passed the Lower House on March 13 and is now being debated at the Upper House, where the LDP and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, lack a majority. The budget will automatically be enacted April 12, even without a vote at the Upper House, due to the Lower House's constitutional supremacy.

Yoshihiko Isozaki, the LDP's Diet affairs chief in the Upper House, met with his counterpart Yoshitaka Saito of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan on Monday and informed him of the ruling party's decision to give up on taking a vote on the fiscal 2026 regular budget by the end of fiscal 2025 on Tuesday.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]