Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda held a meeting of the Ministerial Committee on the Formulation of the Budget at the Prime Minister's Office.

Discussion took place on the Guidelines for FY2012 Budget Requests Reformulation.

Based on the discussion, the Prime Minister said, "The top priorities of my administration are the recovery and reconstruction from the Great East Japan Earthquake and the revival of the Japanese economy. I believe the most basic approach is to promote these two from the perspective of balancing economic growth and fiscal restructuring. It was in this context that a decision was made on these guidelines for reformulation based on the Medium-term Fiscal Framework.
The first point is that the ministries should not hesitate to request full budgets as far as they concern the recovery and reconstruction from the Great East Japan Earthquake. The second point concerns the fiscal resources secured through expenditure reforms: we have decided that they should be invested primarily in policies of higher priority and necessity that are expected to be effective, as a measure to prioritize the revival of Japan.
Based on these guidelines, I ask each ministry to compile requests after making thorough considerations."