State budget for fiscal 2013 features policy agenda pursued by PM Abe

While the total size of the budget draft for fiscal 2013 approved by the Cabinet on Jan. 28 shrank for the first time in seven years, defense expenditures are set to effectively increase year-on-year for the first time in 11 years, highlighting a key policy agenda pursued by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The budget draft also includes spending to finance a plan to provide partly free preschool education, which the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) promised during the previous House of Representative election. The move is part of efforts to win the hearts and minds of voters for policies to be taken by Abe’s government.

There was a widespread view within the LDP, which had pledged to improve defense equipment and increase the number of personnel for the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), that it was natural for defense spending to increase sharply this time. In response to Chinese ships repeatedly invading Japanese territorial waters and Chinese aircraft repeatedly approaching Japan’s territorial airspace near the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, a Finance Ministry official said, “A (specific) margin of increase aside, we can’t avoid an increase in the amount itself.”

Because of this, although the Finance Ministry tried to appraise the request for a defense budget from the standpoint of “maintaining fiscal health,” it could only keep the increase in expenditure at best to one third of the 120 billion yen requested by the Defense Ministry, a senior Finance Ministry official said.

Defense expenditures for fiscal 2013 come to about 4.75 trillion yen, up 40 billion yen from the current fiscal year. The plan to increase SDF personnel by a total of 287 people was approved — the first such increase in eight years. The budget draft also includes spending for maintaining and repairing the airborne warning and control system (AWACS). Mindful of China, much of the extra outlays will be used to boost warning and surveillance capabilities over the Ryukyu Islands, including the area around the Senkaku Islands.

“It will work to keep China in check,” a senior Defense Ministry official said of the outcome of efforts to stop the trend of reducing Japan’s defense budgets and instead secure a larger defense budget for fiscal 2013. In the latest supplementary budget for fiscal 2012, about 212.4 billion yen was set aside mainly to upgrade fighter jets as well as to improve key weapons such as missiles. If the defense spending set aside in the supplementary budget for fiscal 2012 is combined with the outlays for fiscal 2013, Japan’s defense budget will come to nearly 5 trillion yen for the 15-month period until March 2014.

The Finance Ministry also endorsed a 176.5 billion yen budget for fiscal 2013 requested by the Japan Coast Guard (JCG), which keeps watch on Japan’s territorial waters near the Senkaku Islands. Expenditures to finance efforts to tighten security jumped 40 percent from the current fiscal year to 36.4 billion yen for fiscal 2013. The planned outlays include those expenditures to build patrol ships and helicopters, improve bases for ships and aircraft and increase personnel by about 120 people. It is the first large-scale buildup of the JCG structure since 1981 in line with Prime Minister Abe’s policy of boosting defense capabilities.

Apart from the budgetary boost for the Defense Ministry and for the JCG, the budget draft for fiscal 2013 includes a plan to provide free preschool education, albeit with some restrictions. This also falls in line with Abe’s policy agenda. But it will require about 790 billion yen to fully introduce a free preschool education system. If the government were to have difficulties in securing financial resources for the project, it could follow in the footsteps of the previous government led by the Democratic Party of Japan and end up providing only half-hearted support for child-rearing.

Mainichi Shimbun