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On November 10, the third supplementary budget for fiscal 2011 passed the House of Representatives after being approved by a majority vote.
First, the Chair of the Committee on Budget, the DPJ’s Hiroshi Nakai, reported on the Committee’s deliberations on the legislation. Following this, DPJ Diet member Chinami Nishimura made a speech in favour of the bill.
Nishimura stated that upon seeing how people had courageously faced their difficulties following the unprecedented natural and nuclear disaster that had struck Japan on March 11, she had been impressed at the resilience of human beings, whilst at the same time feeling a strong conviction of the need for the utmost efforts to be devoted to recovery and reconstruction.
She went on to comment, “The government and ruling parties have endeavoured to carry out recovery and reconstruction by compiling two supplementary budgets and flexibly employing budgetary reserves, while paying close attention to the opinion of opposition parties and, it goes without saying, to that of people in the disaster-affected areas. The supplementary budget on this occasion has been submitted as a budget for conducting full-scale recovery and reconstruction, based on the Basic Guidelines for Reconstruction in Response to the Great East Japan Earthquake.”
Nishimura explained that the supplementary included provisions to supply the necessary budget for (1) various expenses related to infrastructure needed for daily life, such as the necessary expenses for restoring roads, ports, airports, railways and state schools as speedily as possible, and expenses relating to providing assistance to local governments bearing the financial burden of disposing of debris from the disaster; and (2) emergency assistance for survivors such as loans for those left on low incomes following the disaster, and providing support for continuing classes, reductions in schools fees and scholarship funds for children who are having difficulties in continuing with school; financing to enable small and medium-sized business owners in the disaster-affected regions to rebuild their businesses and stabilize operations; and expenses related to enabling those in the fishing industry, which has suffered enormous damages, to resume or continue their activities.
Nishimura pointed out that “we are being called upon to implement flexible recovery and reconstruction projects” and explained that to fulfil such needs, Great East Japan Earthquake Recovery subsidies had been included in the supplementary budget, with local governments being given greater discretion in the use of these funds in comparison to the existing system of subsidies.
Nishimura went on to say that the situation facing Fukushima prefecture in relation to the nuclear disaster is a fight with the unknown, and stressed, “Precisely because this is a fight with the unknown, taking budgetary measures that leave nothing to chance is also a means to speedily relieve the anxieties of those affected.” She said that projects budgeted for include a variety of measures, including compensation for damages, decontamination, monitoring, research projects into methods for removing and reducing the impact of radioactive materials, and equipping an international medical centre relating to radiation medicine. Furthermore, she explained that the budget, as well as including provisions to deal with the strong yen and economic measures, with recovery from Typhoon Talas, and for public works projects, and the construction of airports, housing and water facilities, also included the budget necessary for replenishing the temporary pension resources used in the first supplementary budget, and for providing payments to those patients infected with Hepatitis B.
Nishimura called for the Diet to approve the legislation, saying, “The budget is an extremely urgent measure for proceeding with recovery and reconstruction following the Great East Japan Earthquake.”
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