A cost-cutting body of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's government on Thursday called for rejecting the Defense Ministry's 7,216 million yen budget request for fiscal 2010 to increase the number of Self-Defense Forces troops by about 3,500.

During its open-door screening of budget requests for the next fiscal year starting in April, a working group of the Government Revitalization Unit gave the green light to the ministry's request totaling 118,996 million yen for paying landowners for leases of land currently used by U.S. military bases and SDF facilities.

The working group also urged the ministry to review its 123,334 million yen to pay for the wages of Japanese people working at U.S. military bases. Their wage levels are basically in accordance with those for national civil servants.

Three working groups of the unit made the recommendations during the second round of project reviews, which began on Nov. 11.

But the working groups are not a decision-making body, and Hatoyama and other official members of the unit will decide whether the projects should be scrapped, slashed or transferred to local municipalities, based on the results of the groups' reviews.

Concerning the SDF troops, the working group said that the ministry should put more efforts into cutting personnel costs and consider outsourcing more of its operations currently done by SDF troops to the private sector.

The group also called on the ministry to review or slash its spending on guns, ammunition, uniforms and other goods, suggesting that it should diversify the procurement network, depend more on inexpensive imports, and seek more cooperation between the ground, maritime and air defense forces.

In terms of military equipment costs, many of the group's members said they are not confident about making a decision, citing a lack of knowledge of the political considerations and technological requirements involved, and decided to leave the matter to the unit.

The group decided to accept the ministry's 36,265 million yen request to cover the cost of noise reduction steps for households living in the vicinity of defense facilities, recommending it should cut back other allocations and redirect the money to these steps.

But it called on the ministry to review its subsidies to local municipalities earmarked for building welfare facilities.

The subsidies reviewed have been paid as part of the government's efforts to make up for the sufferings of local people in the areas hosting the SDF and U.S. military facilities.

The group proposed that the government distribute financial resources instead to local municipalities and let them decide what the money should be spent on, in a bid to boost the effectiveness of the financial support.

As for expenses related to the U.S. military, Japan and the United States have agreed that Tokyo covers part of the expenses for U.S. troops staying in Japan, such as construction of their residences and cost of utilities, and pays the salaries of Japanese employees working at U.S. bases in Japan in the name of host nation support.

By reviewing about 450 public works projects in the fiscal 2010 budget, the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is aiming to trim the size of the budget by 3 trillion yen or more from record-high budgetary requests exceeding 95 trillion yen.

The three working groups comprise lawmakers and experts such as professors, researchers and economists and the screening will continue until Friday.