Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday instructed ministers to draw up a financial package to assist reconstruction in areas hit by recent natural disasters and to cope with other risks to the economy both domestic and abroad, such as the U.S.-China trade row and the U.K.'s exit from the European Union.
The government plans to earmark necessary funds for the package, expected to be worth a few trillion yen, in a supplementary budget for fiscal 2019 through March and in the fiscal 2020 budget, government officials said.
In the first such financial package in three years, spending on reconstruction work will likely receive priority after a series of natural disasters in recent weeks damaged roads, bridges, river embankments, houses and farming facilities in a wide area of the country.