The government has approved a crucial part of an economic policy plan that will serve as a basis for the compilation of the fiscal 2007 budget, following an agreement struck between the government and the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito.
Approved by the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy chaired by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the plan is aimed at fixing the nation's debt-ridden finances. But it fails to establish a clear-cut, singular numerical goal for reducing the nation's spending.
Instead, latitude has been built into the goal so that politicians from the ruling parties could move to hamper realization of the plan's intended effect if they fear that public dissatisfaction with spending cuts will work to their disadvantage ahead of next year's Upper House election.