Senior officials of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, Komeito, agreed Tuesday on the need to draft a supplementary budget before a possible extraordinary session of the Diet this autumn.
The supplementary budget is expected to fund measures to deal with inflation and the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs.
The LDP-Komeito coalition plans to draw up economic measures, including subsidies to reduce electricity and gas bills for July to September, ahead of this summer's House of Councilors election.
"We need a (supplementary) budget to strongly implement economic measures," LDP Diet affairs chief Tetsushi Sakamoto told reporters after meeting with his Komeito counterpart and the secretaries-general of both parties.
The LDP and Komeito officials also agreed to include in the government's forthcoming basic economic and fiscal policy measures to reduce the financial burden of education and to tackle aging infrastructure, in the wake of a road collapse accident in the city of Yashio, Saitama Prefecture, in January.
At the meeting, the Komeito side called for tax cuts and benefits to be considered as economic measures while keeping in mind financial sources. The LDP side did not respond to this, according to Sakamoto.
In response to the day's LDP-Komeito agreement, Junya Ogawa, secretary-general of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, said at a news conference that it will be "too late and irresponsible" to compile a supplementary budget this autumn.
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