Japanese government budgets plan for creating NIH

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) announced its budget request for the fiscal year 2014. The requested amount stands at an increase of 3.8% over the FY2013 budget and surpasses 30 trillion yen ($197.66 billion) for the first time if approved by the Diet next year, reports The Pharma Letter’s local analyst.

The Ministry of Finance (MoF) prepared the budget request for FY2014 from various ministries in the government and the total request surpassed 99 trillion yen, an increase of 6 trillion yen or 7% from the government’s authorized budget for the current FY2013. On a request basis, the increase for FY2014 was only 0.7% from that made for the previous year (FY2013). As usual, the budgets will be slashed by the MoF through hearings over the year end. However, the MHLW seems immune to the MoF’s axe on the government budgets.

The MHLW budget, being the largest in the government, accounted for 32% of the 93 trillion yen general budget of the Japanese government for FY2013. The 29 billion yen spending by the MHLW consisted mainly of medical care (36%), elderly care (36%) and pension funding (9%). Of the requested increase of 3.8% or 1.1 trillion yen for FY2014, the natural increase in the social security spending due to aging of population accounted for 900 billion yen. Most of the remaining increase falls into a special budget set aside for “Promotion of Priority Issues for New Japan.” The new LDP government led by the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has been enhancing pro-industry policies and created the special budget.