Fiscal 2001 budget requests from ministries and agencies will total about 84.83 trillion yen, or 160 billion yen less than the initial budget for the current fiscal year, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday.
Policy-related general expenditure requests, however, are expected to increase by 1.01 trillion yen, or 2.1 percent, to 48.4 trillion yen.
The expected decline in the total is attributed to reduced debt servicing -- including interest payments and bond redemption -- which should plunge 16.3 percent to 18.37 trillion yen, mainly because the 4.5 trillion yen set aside for bank failures in this year's budget will be dropped.