Kantaro Komiya, Tetsushi Kajimoto

TOKYO, Reuters – Japan’s ruling coalition will agree to a supplementary budget that would fund relief measures for small businesses and households to cope with rising fuel prices. This was reported by Kyodo news agency on Thursday.

Kyodo stated that an agreement was reached between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and the Komeito ally, which will confirm that the additional budget will be prepared before the close of the June parliamentary session.

Surprise! The government sought to quickly implement the relief measures by tapping contingency reserves up to 5.5 trillion Japanese yen (42.87 billion), which had been set aside for fiscal 2022 and are available to it at its discretion.

Political pressure on Fumio Kishida, Prime Minister of Japan, to invest heavily in stimulus measures to boost the economy and reduce the suffering caused by rising living costs is growing with the upcoming elections to the upper house.

A supplementary budget would allow policymakers to invest big in economic stimuli, including bond issues.

This could increase the burden of industrial debt, more than double the amount of Japan’s economic output annually.

($1 = 128.2900 yen)