Show latest news, more from January 2010.
Agency for Cultural Affairs secures record funds for 2010, despite stricter budget-making process
At the end of last year it was announced that the Agency for Cultural Affairs would be allocated 102 billion yen (AUD$ 1.2 billion) for fiscal 2010 – the highest annual budget it has ever received.
The 25 December announcement was made by Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Minister, Tatsuo Kawabata, and followed close on the heels of the announcement that the national budget for 2010 would be a record-breaking 92.3 trillion yen (AUD$ 1 trillion).
The 102 billion yen figure for the Agency for Cultural Affairs represents a 0.5 percent increase on the 2009 sum of 101.5 billion yen.
Although the Agency will be pleased with the increase, their allocation is less than their original request, which was for 104 billion yen. In the past it was the case that budgetary requests from government ministries were generally accepted without revision. This time, the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, which was elected last year on a platform of trimming back wasteful spending by the bureaucracy, has taken a different approach to budget formulation. It established a body called the Government Revitalization Unit and charged them with screening the budgetary requests from each ministry. The Unit’s hearings were held in public and attracted much attention at the end of last year.
While the Agency for Cultural Affairs has emerged from the budget-making process largely unscathed in terms of its overall allocation, there was significant public comment by members of the Government Revitalization Unit about the need for cultural programs to be able to be justified in terms of outcomes – useful food for thought for potential applicants for Japanese government funding.
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