Political parties, funding organizations and political groups with operations in more than two prefectures collected 166.575 billion yen in 1996, a drop of 2.4 percent from the previous year, according to a government report released Sept. 19 by the Home Affairs Ministry.
Spending by these groups rose 7.2 percent compared with 1995, amounting to 176.592 billion yen, the report says. But revenue from businesses and organizations rose for the first yearly increase in six years, totaling 17.804 billion yen, or 7.9 percent more than in 1995, it says.
The number of businesses and organizations donating more than 20 million yen each dropped to 58, or 11 fewer than in the previous year. Because of the "jusen" housing loan fiasco, the Liberal Democratic Party refrained from accepting donations from 21 leading banks, which founded the housing loan companies.
Political donations from the banking industry fell sharply from 997 million yen in 1995 to just 35 million yen for the year, the report says. Funds spent to defray election costs in 1996 totaled 18.148 billion yen, or nearly double the 8.745 billion yen spent the year before.
A clear influence on the groups' fund-collecting patterns was the single and proportional representation election system introduced in the Lower House election in October 1996. Of total revenues, party membership dues totaled 3.07 billion yen and donations 1.11 billion yen, both down from the previous year, while official subsidies to political parties accounted for 18.4 percent of total revenues, totaling 30.75 billion yen. The political parties' dependency rate on official funds rose 0.7 percent from the previous year, the report says.