The Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling bloc plans to compile a stopgap budget for fiscal 2013 because the initial budget for the year starting next month is unlikely to be enacted until May, a lawmaker said Tuesday.

The scale of the provisional budget, which the LDP lawmaker said would fund central government spending for 50 days from April 1 through May 20, is expected to be worth over ¥10 trillion, the largest since fiscal 1996, given that it would cover pension expenses and some large public works projects.

The passage of the initial budget for the next fiscal year will be delayed as the current government led by the LDP, which returned to power with its landslide victory in the Dec. 16 general election, was formed on Dec. 26 and the budget compilation process started later than usual.

Masashi Waki, the LDP's Diet affairs chief in the House of Councilors, said the party aims to pass the stopgap budget on March 29 at a plenary session of the Upper House.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet late last month submitted to the Diet a record ¥92.61 trillion initial general-account budget for fiscal 2013.

A provisional budget is formulated to ensure that necessary expenditures such as for social security can be met, when an initial budget is unlikely to be enacted by the end of March.

Last year, the then-Democratic Party of Japan-led government compiled a stopgap budget for fiscal 2012 worth ¥3.61 trillion to cover fiscal spending for six days from April 1, the first such move in 14 years amid political stalemate in the divided Diet, where the DPJ lacked a majority in the Upper House.