Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa on Wednesday unveiled a draft general-account budget for fiscal 2001 that is smaller than its predecessor for the first time in three years but will nevertheless leave Japan 666 trillion yen in debt.
The 82.65 trillion yen draft budget is the first in six years to arrive at port lower than the previous year's; it is 2.7 percent smaller than the initial fiscal 2000 figure of 84.99 trillion yen.
Nevertheless, it will still push the combined liabilities of the central and local governments to 666 trillion yen -- 128.5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, according to Miyazawa -- by the end of March 2002.