Budget request deadline delayed

The Cabinet approved plans Tuesday to delay the deadline for funds requests made by ministries for the fiscal 2012 budget by a month, citing work on the third supplementary budget and Prime Minister Naoto Kan's imminent resignation.

My point of view: Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks to reporters in the Diet on Tuesday. KYODO

Kan officially announced his intention to resign next week.

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda also asked ministries for a 10 percent cut in so-called policy spending for the next fiscal year's budget so funds can be earmarked for social security costs.

Government agencies and ministries are asked to submit their funding requests to the Finance Ministry by the end of August, but this year the closing date will be Sept. 30, Noda said.

"We are at a transition stage from the current Cabinet to the new Cabinet," said Noda, himself a candidate in the Democratic Party of Japan presidential race to find a successor to Kan. The next DPJ leader will likely be elected Monday.

Noda added that the supplementary budget, which will include major allocations for restoring the disaster-hit Tohoku region, cannot be put aside.

According to an outline released Tuesday by the Finance Ministry, general account spending for fiscal 2012 will be kept at less than ¥71 trillion, or at the same level as the fiscal 2011 budget. Spending related to Tohoku's reconstruction and subsidies for hepatitis B patients will be handled separately from the general account.

Issuance of new bonds will be limited to ¥44 trillion, the same as this year, the ministry said.

The government will "make necessary cuts and create a budget that puts priority on urgently needed policies," Noda told reporters, adding that despite the delay for allocation requests, the Cabinet intends to approve the final budget plan by the end of December.

As a preliminary guideline for making requests, the Finance Ministry put out a principle for the budget plan that calls for a 10 percent policy spending cut that is to pay for an extra ¥1.2 trillion in additional social security costs in 2012. Policy spending does not include necessary outlays such as employment costs.

A part of the 10 percent cut will also be set aside for projects prioritized by the next prime minister, according to the Finance Ministry.

Some budget items are excluded from the list of spending cuts. They include money the central government pays local governments, social security costs such as medicine and pensions, subsidies for farmers and money to cover public high school tuitions that students will stop paying in the next school year.

Tuesday's proposal by the ministry is in line with the midterm fiscal policy plan released by the government earlier this month that calls for turning around the combined primary budget balance by 2020.

KYODO

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Tuesday the government could use its contingency funds to finance rescue measures for industries coming under pressure from the rising yen.

Noda said the government is keeping a close eye on speculative moves in the currency market to prevent any excess volatility in the value of the yen.

"I think it is possible to consider" using government contingency funds, he told reporters, referring to possible measures to ease the negative impact on Japanese industries from the yen's advance against the dollar and other major currencies.

The comment added to the view held by some other ruling party lawmakers that the government should respond swiftly by using reserve funds to defuse tension over expectations that Japanese manufacturers will accelerate their relocation of production abroad to cut costs.

Utilizing the funds is an option that could be implemented faster than other steps, including forming an extra budget.

Noda earlier said the government could give incentives to domestic manufacturers to remain in Japan by using a slice of funds under an envisaged third supplementary budget for fiscal 2011, which will mainly be aimed at financing reconstruction work following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

"There is no doubt that the excess strength of the yen will have a negative impact on the Japanese economy at a time when we are making every effort" to rebuild disaster-hit areas, he said. "Now we are closely watching whether there are any speculative moves" in the market.

KYODO

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Tuesday criticized recent remarks by one of the top bureaucrats in his ministry that were taken by the currency market as suggesting Japan is not eager to intervene and weaken the yen.

"Under these circumstances in which many (market players) are paying particular attention, such a key person should be careful about his remarks," Noda told a Diet committee, referring to Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Takehiko Nakao.

Nakao, Japan's top financial diplomat who took office earlier this month, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday that the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Japan "don't have plans to intervene often," adding, "we don't use intervention as a daily tool."

View the original article here

Japan Delayed Village's Evacuation Over Radiation Threshold - Global Security Newswire

Japan's government took more than one month to evacuate the village of Iitate after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant sustained damage in March, due in part to an uneven dispersal of radioactive contaminants across the area and a lack of consensus over the threat posed by the material, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday (see GSN, Aug. 15).

Authorities have battled to prevent radioactive contaminants from escaping the six-reactor facility following a March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 20,000 people dead or missing in Japan. Four days into the crisis, an air current that had been pushing radioactive material seaward turned northwest and prompted warnings from nation's radioactive plume modeling system, dubbed the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, that contaminants would move toward Iitate.

Japan's Fukushima prefecture provided warning by March 15 of elevated atmospheric contaminant concentrations in Iitate, where roughly 6,000 people lived. The nation's Education Ministry, followed by other entities, began measuring radiation levels around the village on March 16, and regular air samples were eventually being collected at 36 locations in the area. Tokyo put the data online without comment.

Radiation levels in Iitate appeared significant to Toshimitsu Honma, a senior official with Japan's Nuclear Safety Research Center who also sits on the emergency committee of the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission. Still, the village's cumulative radiation level had not yet reached the government's evacuation threshold of 50 millisieverts; Tokyo advised residents to remain inside in areas where cumulative radiation levels fell between 10 and 50 millisieverts.

"We spent a lot of time debating because we knew we were making a very profound decision," Honma said, referring to a potential evacuation order. "The real problem was the 50 millisievert rule," he said, adding he supported removing Iitate's residents as of early April.

Radioactivity in Iitate began to decline after plateauing on March 17 and 18, but contamination persisted and cumulative exposure continued to increase. One isolated area received 28 millisieverts of radiation in the first 17 days of the crisis, and the Nuclear Safety Commission projected it would receive 35 millisieverts over time.

The government, which had acted within days to remove residents from a 12-mile ring around the plant, did not call for Iitate's evacuation as disagreement persisted among Nuclear Safety Commission members over the extent of danger to the village. "We are aware that there are some areas outside (the evacuation zones) that are contaminated, but it is our judgment that there won't be health consequences as a result," said Haruki Madarame, the commission's chairman.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, though, on March 30 said an analysis of ground material turned up contaminants exceeding its evacuation standard. Japan on April 22 called for residents to leave Iitate and four other locations where radioactive materials from the plant had collected unevenly (Yuka Hayashi, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 16).

Meanwhile, local officials for the Fukushima prefecture towns of Futaba and Okuma on Monday said former residents would be permitted between August 26 and September 1 to temporarily return to properties within 1.9 miles of the damaged nuclear plant, Kyodo News reported (Kyodo News/Mainichi Daily News, Aug. 16).

Elsewhere, China indicated it would bolster radiation monitoring efforts in ocean water east of the nuclear plant and in the East China Sea, China Daily reported. The initiative would seek to gauge the effect of radioactive contaminants from the facility on the ocean habitat and on seafood from the region, according to the Chinese State Oceanic Administration's environmental protection department.

Ocean water collected previously by the agency contained 300 times the naturally occurring concentration of radioactive cesium and 100 times the natural concentration of radioactive strontium, according to data made public on July 29 (Wang Qian, China Daily, Aug. 16).

View the original article here