The government is likely to slash the fiscal 2010 budget for a project to scrap expressway tolls to one-sixth of the transport ministry's request, government sources said Saturday.
The Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry will have no alternative but to accept the scaled-down budget of around ¥100 billion and will begin experiments on a limited number of expressways only in the year beginning in April, they said.
Phasing out highway tolls was one of the key election pledges of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which came to power in September.
The ministry initially requested a budget of ¥600 billion, including expenses for collecting data on the economic impact of possible changes in carbon dioxide emissions and traffic levels on expressways.
The Finance Ministry, however, has been pressing ministries to reduce the budgets of projects linked to the DPJ's election platform.
By doing so, it hopes to carry out the basic budget policy pledge Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama made earlier this month to keep new government bond issuance below ¥44 trillion for the next fiscal year.
Hatoyama's Cabinet is accelerating efforts to draw up a fiscal 2010 budget plan by the end of this month at a time when a tax revenue shortfall is making it difficult to raise enough money for its key policies.