TOKYO (AFX-ASIA) - Fumio Kyuma, acting policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said the government may issue more than 30 trln yen in government bonds during the year to March, if the national tax revenue falls short of the earlier estimate of 54.3 trln yen due to further weakness in the economy. His remarks came after Takeo Hiranuma, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, recently expressed a view that the government may need to put aside 5 trln yen for the supplementary budget in the year to March 2002. In addition, Shizuka Kamei, former policy chief of the LDP, has also proposed an additional 30 trln yen in government9s public works spending to boost the struggling domestic demand. "The government has worked out a mid-term fiscal reform plan that involves putting a limitation of 30 trln yen on new government bond issuance for the year to March 2003, believing that the economy can grow by just below 2 pct this fiscal year," Kyuma said in a local TV program. "But the slowdown in the US economy, which is reportedly going to plunge to a zero growth from the earlier projected 1.7 pct rate, is adversely affecting Japanese exporters, with a stream of Japanese blue chip companies having reported red ink." He added: "Although Koizumi wants to keep the ceiling effective from this fiscal year, the three coalition parties are concerned that the 1.7 trln yen that the government can use to finance the supplementary budget (calculated as a divergence between the 30 trln yen ceiling and the 28.3 trln yen already budgeted for this fiscal year) may be eaten up to finance the possible shortage of tax revenue." "If we saw tax revenue falling more than had been initially estimated, it would be possibly difficult that the government can keep the 30 trln yen ceiling policy. So, we should get ready to deal with any imaginable situation," he said.