Report No.230601

NEWS

- Domestic -

Fiscal 2006 Budget for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Down 4.6% at 2,831 Billion Yen

The government finalized budget proposal for the fiscal year 2006 at the extraordinary Cabinet meeting on December 24, 2005, which fixes the total spending under the general account at 79,686 billion yen. According to the budget plan, the allocation for agriculture, forestry and fisheries is set at 2,831 billion yen, which is less by 136.2 billion yen or 4.6% compared to the size of initial budget for fiscal 2005.

This makes the scale of allocation for agriculture, forestry and fisheries to remain below the order of three trillion yen for two years in a row, reflecting the government posture to move towards regaining a balance between fiscal revenue and expenditure, and also the impact of the Sanmi-ittai ["Trinity"] reforms of taxation and finance. Under the Sanmi-ittai reforms, the sources of tax revenue will be transferred to local governments and the national government's subsidy will be either abolished or reduced.

The government budget proposal puts emphasis on the upbringing and securing of enough number of core farmers, and on the securing of safety of and peace of mind about food. The emphasis on the former is made in preparation for the launching in 2007 of a non-product specific farm business stabilization measures (Japanese-style direct payment) under which the policy support will be targeted to selected farming operations.

Shown in the table below are some of the main newly budgeted programs:

The upbringing of core farmers
Searching out and securing leaders for promoting community farming	2,000 million yen
Support in organizing of community-operated farming and in centralizing of their accounting	345 million yen
Program to support the upbringing and securing of core farmers such as 'approved farmers'	971 million yen
The securing of new entrants to farming, and of core female or aged farmers	97 million yen
Concentration of the use of farmland in the hands of core farmers	800 million yen
The enhancing of self-sufficiency ratio of food
The increasing of domestically grown roughage	10,930 million yen
Supporting of place of origin labeling in food service industry	29 million yen
Promoting of export doubling measures	1,253 million yen
Promoting of food awareness education in food service industry and at the retail level	3,945 million yen
The securing of safety of and peace of mind about food
Measures to control and prevent the spread of infectious diseases in animals	3,710 million yen
Identifying of country of production by analysis of ingredients of food	840 million yen
Measures related to environment preservation
Model experiments of measures to preserve agricultural land, water and environment	1,250 million yen
Woodland consolidation to prevent abandoning of cultivation and injury by birds and wild animals on Satoyama [neighborhood village woodlands and fields from which to harvest firewood and green manures ]	11,000 million yen

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