Press Conference by Prime Minister Ishiba regarding the Cabinet Approving the Fiscal Year 2025 Draft Budget and Other Matters

[Opening statement by Prime Minister Ishiba]

Today, [the Cabinet] approved the draft budget for fiscal 2025. This budget, in combination with the supplementary budget for fiscal 2024, takes as its main objective ensuring the transition from an economy focused on cost-cutting to an economy based on the creation of high amounts of added value. Alongside that, we aim to provide precise responses to the structural changes Japan now faces and strive to provide safety and security for all.

While we must raise wages, we must also boost companies' earning power, which is the source that makes wage increases possible. Making use of public-private partnerships, we will also steadily press forward in promoting investment in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors as well as in green transformation (GX), proceeding in a planned manner over the span of several fiscal years. We intend to reinforce our growth potential and kindle new demand.

It is our local regions that play the leading part in achieving economic growth. I have said it many times before, but local industry, government, academia, financial institutions, labor organizations, and media must come together in partnership to bring out each local area's potential. To support such efforts, we have incorporated into this budget a doubling of the total amount of money available for regional revitalization grants.

We will implement our support for children and child-raising in a fully-fledged manner based on our Children's Future Strategy, providing in fiscal 2025 seamless support for all children and all households raising children through further reducing the burden imposed by higher education, improving the quality of childcare services by improving the allocation of [childcare staff for] one-year-olds, and enhancing childcare leave benefits.

Based on the lessons learned on the Noto Peninsula, we will institute a registration system for food trucks [providing hot prepared meals in disaster-stricken areas lacking stable water and/or fuel supply]. We will fundamentally bolster our disaster response capabilities. In order to take all possible preparations for disasters that continue to be expected in the future, we will double both the budget and the personnel at the Cabinet Office's Disaster Management Bureau.

The security environment is the most severe it has ever been in the postwar period. Mindful of that, we intend to carry out a fundamental reinforcement of our defense capabilities and also improve the treatment of Self-Defense Forces (SDF) officers while also building up the foundation of our defense in terms of personnel.

We must achieve economic revitalization in a way that is fully compatible with putting public finances on a sound footing. As for the primary balance, including the impact of the supplementary budget for fiscal 2024, at the meeting of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy at the beginning of 2025, we will present our medium-term economic and fiscal outlook and we will examine our progress towards attaining fiscal soundness. We will continue to hold aloft the banner of building up our fiscal health. Under our policy of aiming to achieve a primary balance surplus, we will continue with our efforts in terms of both expenditures and revenue without backtracking on our progress or our results to date.

I will do my very best to explain this draft at the Diet session that will convene at the beginning of 2025 in order to obtain the approval of many, aiming at the early enactment of this draft budget.

I will end my opening remarks here.

(On the specific timing of Prime Minister Ishiba moving into the prime minister's official residence; in light of the fact that some past prime ministers have not lived at the official residence, on why Prime Minister Ishiba decided to move in and on whether or not he is concerned about rumors that the official residence is haunted)

The inspections and repairs at the official residence have now been completed. Moving is not such a simple task, but nevertheless I do hope to move into the official residence at the earliest possible time.

My generation grew up reading the manga Obake no Q-Taro (Little Ghost Q-Taro).  Do you know that manga?  Not really? I'm not particularly afraid of ghosts. I suppose actually seeing one would indeed be scary, but I'm not worried about that kind of thing.

As for the timing, I'm afraid that there are some security-related matters to consider, so I'll just say that I'll be moving in as soon as possible.

(On how Prime Minister Ishiba intends to obtain the cooperation of opposition parties regarding the draft budget, insofar as rough going is anticipated for deliberations on the draft budget bill in light of the LDP being a minority ruling party)

The draft budget bill was compiled through multiple discussions over time. Our aim is as I stated just now, namely that as a minority ruling party, we cannot enact the budget bill without the approval of members of opposition parties. In order to win the support of legislators in the opposition parties, the reaction from members of the public needs to be, "Yes, they've got it right in that bill." Without that, I don't think we will get the support of the opposition party legislators. By offering at the Standing Committee on the Budget and elsewhere thorough explanations of the aims that I stated earlier, I hope to precipitate an environment in which we can receive support from members of opposition parties.

(On whether or not it will be possible to get the understanding of the public through the approach of hastening the drawing of the curtain on the political slush fund issue, in connection to the LDP announcing an 800 million yen donation to charity as a political settlement of the matter) 

There is no attempt being made to hasten the drawing of the curtain on this matter. While there is in fact some desire to fully settle the matter in one sense, it is absolutely not correct that the decision was an attempt to hasten bringing the matter to a conclusion, or anything grounded in that kind of thinking. Whether or not the matter is in fact now settled is something for the Japanese people themselves to determine. Accordingly, I do not believe this is an area where we should claim that the final curtain has now been drawn on the matter or that the matter is now settled. My own thinking here is that I want us [the LDP] to be even stricter in disciplining ourselves going forward so that the public does indeed deem the matter a thing of the past.