General account budget requests for fiscal 2003 will total 84.02 trillion yen, up 2.79 trillion yen, or 3.4 percent, from the initial budget for the current fiscal year, the Finance Ministry said Thursday.
Since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is keen to fix Japan's debt-ridden finances, plans to maintain a belt-tightening policy for the budget for the next fiscal year, the budgets are likely to be drastically less than the requests.
Friday is the deadline for ministries and agencies to submit their budget requests for fiscal 2003, which will start April 1.