The Finance Ministry on Tuesday told the Cabinet that spending requests from government ministries and agencies for fiscal 2004 have risen 5.7 percent from the initial fiscal 2003 budget, hitting 86.455 trillion yen.

The requests were filed Aug. 29. At that time, the ministry said the requests would total 86.46 trillion yen.

The ministry reported that requests for policy-related spending, known as general expenditures, totaled 48.121 trillion yen, up 1.1 percent from the initial budget for fiscal 2003, ministry officials said.

Requests for debt-servicing costs rose 9.7 percent to 18.429 trillion yen, while requests for tax grants to local governments rose 12 percent to 19.489 trillion yen, the officials said.

These are the other two pillars of the general account.