The size of the fiscal 2001 budget will exceed that for the current fiscal year and focus on bringing about a full-scale economic recovery, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa said Sunday.

The top government spokesman made the remark during NHK's Sunday Debate program.

"It will be difficult for it (the fiscal 2001 budget) to be below the original fiscal 2000 budget," Nakagawa said. "It should become a budget program that ensures a full-scale economic recovery."

As for a budgetary "ceiling" that supposedly helps the government rein in public outlays, he said the government of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and the three ruling parties should debate the efficiency and quality of improvement of such a measure.

Nakagawa is understood to favor the removal of such a ceiling, arguing that the practice of setting a budgetary cap during a time when various government agencies submit requests for outlays would instead undermine government efforts to overhaul the fiscal system.

But Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said Wednesday he favors the maintenance of a budgetary ceiling for the time being. as there is no suitable alternative. The budgetary cap sets an approximate overall figure under which the various ministries and government agencies present their budget requests to the government.