The House of Representatives on Friday approved the government's supplementary budget bills for fiscal 2004, worth about 4.77 trillion yen, including 1.36 trillion yen allocated toward disaster relief.
The opposition camp did not oppose the bills out of consideration toward survivors of the earthquakes that struck Niigata Prefecture's Chuetsu region in October, as well as other natural disasters that hit the archipelago last year.
The supplementary budget was expected to be given final approval by the Diet on Tuesday. It would be the first time for a supplementary budget to be approved with the Diet's unanimous support since February 1995, when the second extra budget for fiscal 1994 was approved to deal with the damage caused by the Great Hanshin Earthquake.