The Hatoyama administration wants to keep the general account budget for fiscal 2010 within ¥92 trillion without issuing more deficit-covering bonds than the previous government, Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said Oct. 19.

On Oct. 16, the amount of budgetary requests submitted by ministries and agencies for the year starting April 2010 reached an all-time high of ¥95.04 trillion, despite the Democratic Party of Japan's goal of reducing wasteful spending.

Amid a sharp fall in tax revenue and the possible expansion of the budget, Fujii said the government wants to limit "the issuance of bonds to below ¥44 trillion, to make it smaller than the total amount planned by the previous Cabinet" for this fiscal year.

Fujii's target of keeping the 2010 budget under ¥92 trillion is apparently taking into consideration the total amount of budgetary requests filed by central government offices when the Liberal Democratic Party controlled the government in late August.