TOKYO, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Japan's parliament on Monday enacted an 8.56 trillion yen (about 54 billion U.S. dollars) stopgap state budget to cover expenditures for the first 11 days of fiscal 2026, which begins Wednesday.
The provisional budget was approved by both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors after the government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) abandoned efforts to pass the fiscal 2026 regular budget before the new fiscal year.
Under the stopgap budget, the first of its kind in 11 years, 5.1 trillion yen will be allocated to local governments as subsidies, while 2.8 trillion yen will cover social security expenses such as pension and welfare payments.
It will also finance new measures starting in April, including 47.7 billion yen to expand subsidies for private high school tuition and 14.9 billion yen to support lunch fees at elementary schools.
Sanae Takaichi's government was forced to draft the stopgap budget after facing resistance from opposition parties over its record 122.31 trillion yen draft budget for fiscal 2026.
The draft budget, which includes defense spending exceeding 9 trillion yen for the first time, has drawn controversy and criticism.
Takaichi pushed the initial draft budget through the lower house on March 13 by significantly curtailing deliberations, capitalizing on the supermajority that her ruling LDP won in the Feb. 8 general election.
However, in the upper house, where the draft budget is now being deliberated, the opposition did not allow the LDP-led ruling coalition, which holds only a minority in this chamber, to control the pace of deliberations, thus blocking Takaichi's bid to have the annual budget enacted in time for the new fiscal year.
But the budget will automatically be enacted on April 12 even without a vote at the upper house, due to the lower house's constitutional supremacy. ■
