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Japan's largest ever budget, aimed at reviving the nation's ailing economy through increased public spending, includes a generous 8.1 per cent boost in expenditure on science, with a strong emphasis on basic research.

Table 1 Highlights of Japan's Science and Technology Budget 1999 (in billion yen: US$1 = ¥113)
Full size table

The budget for the 1999 fiscal year, which begins on 1 April, takes overall science spending across all ministries and agencies to ¥963 billion (US$8.5 billion), with large increases for life sciences in particular. Also featured are support for creating new businesses through ‘commercially applicable research’, and the promotion of collaborative research between universities and industry.

The total government budget of ¥81.9 trillion — an increase of 5.4 per cent from the previous year and the highest growth rate in 20 years — was approved by the Cabinet on 25 December. The increase in science expenditure is in line with the five-year plan for science and technology, under which the government pledged to double the nation's research spending between 1996 and 2001.

The budget for the Science and Technology Agency (STA) has grown by 4.1 per cent from last year, as a result of increased support for brain and genome research, especially with last year's opening of the Genome Sciences Centre, backed by the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research. Spending on nuclear and space research was kept down so more funding can be allocated to basic research in other areas, according to STA.

Spending on space development will increase by 2.6 per cent by the last-minute addition of funding for a reconnaissance satellite to improve Japan's ability to gather security information, following last year's firing of a North Korean missile over Japanese territory (see Nature 396, 401; 1998).

The satellite will be allocated ¥11.3 billion in 1999, with ¥6.8 billion going to STA (included in the space development budget), ¥2.2 billion to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), ¥1.4 billion to the Cabinet secretariat, and ¥0.9 billion to the post and telecommunications ministry.

STA will also gain an extra ¥2.7 billion to produce SELENE, a lunar probe jointly developed by MITI and the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. Although the overall budget for the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (Monbusho) has increased by only 1.4 per cent, its spending for scientific research has grown by a comparatively generous 6.7 per cent.

The Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment, carried out jointly by the Institute of Cosmic Ray Research at Tokyo University and Monbusho's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), will gain ¥1 billion, and high-energy accelerator research at KEK will receive ¥8.5 billion. This is an increase of 372 per cent from last year, to cover the initial operating costs of Belle, a precision particle detector for studying B-mesons (Nature 396, 612; 1998).

The postdoctoral fellowship scheme under Monbusho, which aims to increase the number of Japan's postdoctoral researchers to 10,000 by the millennium, is expected to reach its target this year. Monbusho and STA will support an extra 1,304 postdocs in 1999, making 10,076 by the end of the fiscal year.

MITI's spending on research has gone up by 8.9 per cent from last year. Support for new venture businesses will receive a spending boost, especially at universities, following the passing of a law promoting collaboration between universities and industry.

The budget has yet to be approved by the Diet (Japan's parliament), but changes to science-related budgets are usually minimal.

This year's dramatic spending increase is in sharp contrast to last year's austere budget. This was drawn up under the Fiscal Structural Reform Act, which sought to cap spending commitments in order to control government deficits and promote budgetary restraint; the law has since been frozen.

While the 1999 budget is aimed at producing the government's projected economic growth — 0.5 per cent in gross domestic product by the next fiscal year — analysts are critical that it will be partly funded by ¥31 trillion in government bonds, putting the nation deeper in debt.