Cash benefit program likely to hit difficulties
Written by Writer on Friday, November 14th, 2008
Cash benefit program likely to hit difficulties
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The cash benefit program agreed Wednesday by the government and the ruling parties is likely to run into difficulties in terms of implementation by the end of the fiscal year.
Protests from the opposition bloc and additional administrative procedures that will have to be undertaken by municipal governments who will handle the cash distribution likely will hamper the payout program’s rapid implementation.
The ruling bloc agreed on a flat-sum 12,000 yen per-person cash payout–as part of a government economic stimulus package–with an additional 8,000 yen for people aged 18 or younger and 65 or older.
To realize its goal, the government needs the Diet to pass the second supplementary budget for fiscal 2008 and related bills on fiscal resources for the program.
However, the opposition parties are poised to oppose both the supplementary budget and related bills.
“We can’t see where the financial resources [for the program] are going to come from,” Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama told reporters in the Diet on Wednesday. “We can’t just agree to a plan that members of the public are angry about because it tries to make fools of them.”
If the opposition bloc, which holds a majority in the House of Councillors, was to prolong Diet deliberations for a vote on the budget and bills, the supplementary budget will be approved automatically, 30 days after being sent to the upper house from the House of Representatives.
However, the related bills, if rejected at the upper house, need to be reapproved by the lower house 60 days after the bills are sent to the upper house.
The government and the ruling parties started coordinating views on arrangements to deal with the budgetary issue and the bills at an ordinary Diet session in January.
However, even if the supplementary budget and the related bills were approved at the lower house immediately after the opening of the ordinary Diet session, it is likely the bills would be enacted only after mid-March.
“We want to enact the bills as early as possible and transfer the cash benefits to each municipal government in February,” a government source said, leaving open the possibility that the central government will be unable to provide the cash through municipal governments to each householder by the end of this fiscal year, which ends in March.
If the bills were enacted before the end of the fiscal year, the cash would be transferred from the central government to the local municipalities by the end of March.
However, the local governments would each have to draw up basic plans to determine how the cash benefits should be distributed, while having their respective supplementary budgets related to the program passed at their assemblies.
Local governments will need to train employees charged with dispensing the cash at counters, while also developing preventive measures against new types of bank transfer scams that possibly could target recipients of the cash payout.
Taking these issues into consideration, some observers doubt if the cash distribution can be completed by the end of this fiscal year, as envisaged by the government.
(Nov. 14, 2008)
