Hundreds of billions of yen in taxpayer money was again wasted by the government and publicly funded organizations in fiscal 2013, according to the annual report by the Board of Audit. Given the nation's snowballing public debt, it is all the more important for bureaucrats and other officials to ensure their projects are implemented properly. They need to first design them from the viewpoint of maximizing cost-effectiveness, and make sure that the programs will achieve their intended effects.
The report also discusses improper behavior of organizations that was discovered by the board when it audited them.
The wasteful use of taxpayer money exposed by the audit board's examination of spending by the national government and organizations with at least 50 percent of their capital supplied by the national government, and local governments and educational institutions getting national government subsidies reached ¥283.1 billion over 595 cases. It represents a decrease of ¥200 billion from the previous year but is still a huge amount.