Top Finance Ministry officials on Monday raised doubts over the need for a supplementary budget to help alleviate the recession during a meeting with the nation's most powerful business lobby.
The ministry officials, including Koji Tanami, administrative vice finance minister, met with executives from the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren), including Chairman Takashi Imai.
In the meeting, the officials stressed that the state and local governments have already spent huge sums on recent pump-priming measures, which rapidly worsened the government's financial status, according to people present at the meeting.