Japan's fiscal 2017 budget requests top 100 trln yen amid concerns over fiscal quagmire

Budget requests by Japan's central government offices for fiscal 2017 amounted to some 101.47 trillion yen (983 billion U.S. dollars), Japan's financial ministry said on Tuesday.

The requests exceeded 100 trillion yen for the third consecutive year, according to the ministry, partly due to the soaring social security costs in the aging country, while the government's recently-announced 28 trillion yen stimulus package also contributed to the large number.

The budget request by Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare stood at 31.12 trillion yen, the highest among all the ministries, while the Defense Ministry asked for a record-high 5.17 trillion yen, a 2.3 percent increase from this year's apportionment and the 5th annual rise under the Abe administration.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, for its part, asked for 6.82 trillion yen, with the budget request for the tourism agency increasing by a large margin in a bid to attract more foreign tourists to Japan.

The requests were put forward amid public concerns over Japan's precarious fiscal condition under the current sluggish economy and with consumption tax hike further delayed to October 2019.

The Japanese government is burdened with arrears that stand as the highest in the industrialized world, amounting to more than twice the size of Japan's economy.

The government, however, has said that it remains committed to turning the primary balance deficit into a surplus by fiscal 2020, an objective considered hard to be achieved by many observers.

The budget requests will be screened and trimmed by the financial ministry and a state budget will be compiled in December. Endit