Tokyo to cover all reconstruction costs in quake-hit areas‎

[News_Editor]

Tokyo to cover all reconstruction costs in quake-hit areas‎

2011-03-28 00:00:27 GMT+7 (ICT)

TOKYO (BNO NEWS) -- The Japanese government on Sunday said it would cover all reconstruction costs for the northeastern areas hit by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami on March 11, Jiji Press reported.


Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Yoshihiro Katayama said in a television program that the central government will make efforts to keep local government costs for post-quake reconstruction as low as zero.

He added that the government will increase special tax revenue grants by far more than 30 billion yen ($368 million), which will likely be financed by a supplementary budget for fiscal 2011 starting on Friday.

Tokyo will also cover nearly all costs of clearing debris in the areas. It is considering measures that will go beyond those taken after the 7.3-magnitude quake that devastated western Japan's Kobe area in 1995, Yukihiko Akutsu, parliamentary secretary for Prime Minister Naoto Kan's cabinet, said.

The central government covered 97.5 per cent of the costs of clearing debris after the 1995 earthquake, while municipalities financed the remainder.
   

More than 6,000 people died in the 1995 quake, while the death toll from the latest quake and tsunami has already topped 10,000.

Previously, Japan's Cabinet Office estimated that total damages caused by the catastrophe, including destruction of social infrastructure, housing and corporate facilities in the region could cost between 16 and 25 trillion yen ($198 and $309 billion), which could cause the nation's growth rate to drop by 0.5 percent.

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