Leaders of the government and the ruling coalition parties effectively agreed Friday that policy-related spending in the fiscal 2001 budget should at least be as expansionary as this year's 48 trillion yen, to help achieve a full-fledged economic recovery.
In deciding basic policy on guidelines for budget requests, they also agreed to set aside 700 billion yen for Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to distribute to information technology and other priority projects that help with environmental protection, urban infrastructure and the aging of society.
They decided to allow ministries and government agencies to submit an unlimited number of requests for chunks of the 300 billion yen allocated for various public works projects. These allocations will be examined by the ruling coalition parties.