Japan Press Weekly

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2019 January 23 - 29 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Funds local gov'ts have hoarded increased by 9.8 trillion yen in decade

Many local governments, whose assemblies are made up mainly of Liberal Democratic and Komei party assemblypersons, have been increasing their reserve funds while harming people's well-being and livelihoods.

These funds are kind of savings each municipality amasses. They consist of funds which are free to use, earmarked for specific purposes, or set aside for repayments of debts or for the redemption of local government bonds.

The amount of fund balances of all municipalities in Japan reaches 23.8 trillion yen, as of FY2017, up 9.8 trillion yen from FY2007. The free-to-use funds alone have increased by 3.2 trillion yen in the same period of time.

Kawasaki City in Kanagawa Prefecture, for example, has a solid financial strength. Its general account budget in FY2018 amounted to more than 730 billion yen. Its tax revenues in the same fiscal year was about 347.9 billion yen, hitting a record high for five consecutive years.

According to the FY2017 account settlements, Kawasaki City has 223.9 billion yen in its fund balances. The amount has been going up since fiscal 2009. Over the past eight years, the city government has hoarded additional funds of more than 110 billion yen.

The Japanese Communist Party proposes that local governments stop wasteful spending on unnecessary large-scale development projects and utilize a portion of their accumulated funds so that financial resources necessary to meet citizens' urgent demands can be secured.

In each local assembly, carefully scrutinizing the contents of funds in order to make the best use of them and calling for local politics putting priority on protecting people's livelihoods, JCP assemblypersons made concrete proposals such as cutting residents' payments of national health insurance premiums, improving childrearing support services, and building up disaster-prevention countermeasures.