NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
TOKYO REGIONAL OFFICE

September 17, 2004

The National Science Foundation's Tokyo Regional Office periodically reports on developments in Japan that are related to the Foundation's mission.  It also provides occasional reports on developments in other East Asian countries.

Tokyo Office Report Memoranda are intended to provide information for the use of NSF program officers and policy makers; they are not statements of NSF policy.

Report Memorandum #04-08

The following report was prepared by Ms. Kazuko Shinohara of the National Science Foundation’s Tokyo Regional Office. She can be reached at kshinoha@nsf.gov

S&T-related Budget Requests for JFY2005
- Quick Summary -

Based on the budget requests for JFY2005 submitted to date by the ministries/agencies in Japan with the deadline of August 30, 2004, MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) has compiled a quick summary of the S&T-related budget requests and made it public. The total amount of the S&T-related budget requests was Yen 4,011.1 billion (ca. $36.79 billion), an increase of 11.2 percent over the previous year. This is a quick compilation of the requested budgets before review and rating by CSTP (Council for Science and Technology Policy). Following review, the ratings will then be forwarded to the Ministry of Finance which will make the final budget decision by the end of December 2004. This office will report the rating results and the final figures when they are announced.

Table 1 below shows a quick summary of the S&T-related budget requests by nature of budgets for JFY2005 and S&T-related budget amounts for JFY2004. Table 2, which follows, is a quick summary of the S&T-related budget requests by ministry/agency for JFY2005 and the S&T-related budgets for JFY2004. For the reason cited above, the figures may change.

A notable feature of JFY2005 budget classification shown in Table 1 is that the funds for “National University Corporations” are included in the “General Account” for the first time in history. The item appeared independently in JFY2004 budget request (refer to http://www.nsftokyo.org/rm03-09.html) to indicate the interim period during which the national universities would become independent entities. Before that, the funds for national universities had been part of the “Special Account” as shown in http://www.nsftokyo.org/rm02-09.html Thus the funds for national universities will have totally been shifted from the “Special Account” to the “General Account” in JFY2005.

From Table 2 it is obvious that MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture Sports, S&T) remains to be the biggest player in S&T fields by occupying 65 percent of the total request amounts in S&T fields and more than four times of the amount requested by the next biggest player, METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry). In JFY2005 the total amount for the competitive funds will increase from the previous year by 68 percent. The details of this increase will be reported separately later.

Table 1

S&T-related Budget Requests for JFY2005

(Unit: Billion Yen)

Note:
- The separate line items may not add up to the total due to rounding errors.
- The Public R&D Investment mentioned in the Second Basic Plan is the total of the central government S&T-related funds and local government S&T-related funds.

Table 2

S&T-related Budget Requests for JFY2005 by Agency/Ministry

- Quick Summary -

(Unit: Billion Yen)

Note:

The separate line items may not add up to the total due to rounding errors.

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