Japan Government's 126 Trillion Won Supplementary Budget... Economic Measures Including Subsidies for Low-Income Households

The Japanese government is promoting economic measures including providing a subsidy of 30,000 yen (approximately 270,000 won) per household to low-income families.

Shigeru Ishiba, Prime Minister of Japan / Photo by Yonhap News

According to Kyodo News and NHK on the 22nd, the Japanese government held an extraordinary cabinet meeting on the same day and finalized comprehensive economic measures to respond to high inflation and support economic growth.

First, 30,000 yen will be paid per household to low-income groups exempt from resident tax, and an additional 20,000 yen per child will be subsidized for households with children. Subsidies for electricity and gas fees, applied up to usage in October last year, will resume in January next year and be extended for an additional three months, and the gasoline subsidy, which was scheduled to end in December this year, will be maintained on a reduced scale.

The measures also include improvements to the "1.03 million yen wall," a demand from the third opposition party, the Democratic Party for the People, which the Liberal Democratic Party has chosen as a policy cooperation partner amid a situation where the ruling party is in the minority. A plan to support more than 10 trillion yen by 2030 through subsidies, investments, and debt guarantees in industries such as artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors has also been prepared. In addition, efforts will be made to improve the living environment for disaster-affected residents and strengthen crime control systems.

The Japanese government plans to allocate about 13.9 trillion yen (approximately 126.5 trillion won) in the supplementary budget for the general account this year to support these economic measures. Including government special accounts, local government expenditures, and private funds, the total project scale is estimated to be around 39 trillion yen.

The Cabinet Office expects that "these economic measures will raise the real gross domestic product (GDP) by about 21 trillion yen." The Japanese government plans to submit the supplementary budget bill supporting the economic measures to the extraordinary Diet session scheduled to convene on the 28th.