Japan Fin Min Confident the Sales Tax Will Be Introduced

Japan will tell G20 nations at a summit this week that it will proceed with a planned two-stage sales tax hike, and consider compiling an extra budget for fiscal spending to ease the pain on the economy, Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday.

Aso, who will accompany Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the Group of 20 summit in Russia, also said Japan is unlikely to face criticism from other countries this time about the yen’s weakness that boosts the competitive advantage of its exports.

“Japan has launched fiscal and monetary stimulus to pull out of deflation. The yen’s weakness was only a side-effect of that ultimate goal of beating deflation,” Aso told a news conference after a regular cabinet meeting. Japan has pledged at previous G20 gatherings that it will make efforts to rein in its ballooning public debt which, at double the size of its $5 trillion economy is the biggest among major industrialized nations.

via CNBC

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