JCP: Koizumi Cabinet's confusion apparent in two draft budgets

A Japanese Communist Party official in charge of policy-making characterized the Koizumi Cabinet as being paralyzed in its management of the nation's economy, citing its conflicting approaches to the draft supplementary budget for FY 2001 and the draft FY 2002 budget.

On the NHK Sunday Debate program broadcast on January 28, Fudesaka Hideyo, JCP Policy Commission chair, pointed out that the two budgets include an invisible 6.5 trillion yen in national debts, and that the land and transport minister publicly said that the ministry's budgets for public works projects will increase by 6 percent.

Fudesaka also criticized the government for increasing the money supply while inducing major banks to be reluctant to lend money to small businesses and forcibly collect debts from them. Funding for public works projects was cut by 1 trillion yen in the fiscal 2002 budget but was increased by 2.5 trillion yen in the extra budget for fiscal 2001 ending this March.

He pointed out that the average annual income (in real terms) of a working household is 400,000 yen less than what it was ten years ago. He stressed that this is to blame for declining personal consumption. The JCP lawmaker said that countermeasures should be taken to regulate corporate restructuring, cancel government plans for the adverse revision of social services, and cut the consumption tax rate.

Even Kyuma Fumio of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party cast doubts about the government being correct in only pursuing "structural reform" policy under the stalled economy. Kitagawa Kazuo of the Komei Party said that it is necessary to rethink what the "structural reform" policy under the deflationary spiral should be like. (end)