Japan is set to unveil a stimulus package worth ¥8 trillion (US$73 billion) in a bid to shore up the economy, a newspaper report said yesterday.
Economic fiscal policy minister Kaoru Yosano delivered a draft of the planned measures to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Finance Minister Bunmei Ibuki on Friday, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.
Early this month, Fukuda ordered Yosano to draw up a package to boost economic growth and support small businesses as well as farmers and fishermen hit by soaring oil prices.
The measures are also designed to discount expressway tolls, support young job seekers and expand the nation’s medicare services for the elderly, the mass circulation daily said.
The latest stimulus is still smaller than a reform program worth ¥14.8 trillion announced in December 2002 by then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi in December 2002.
The finance ministry is largely expected to submit an extra budget to parliament to finance the package, but Ibuki has said the government was not expecting to issue new bonds to finance it.
The government faces calls from some lawmakers within the ruling coalition for a big injection of public money to boost Asia’s largest economy, which contracted in the second quarter, moving closer to recession.
Japan has already unveiled measures to ease the burden of high oil prices, including a ¥74.5 billion package last month to help fishermen, who have held strikes to protest against soaring fuel costs.
Resource-poor Japan relies heavily on imports of crude oil, the price of which has doubled over the past two years and risen five-fold since 2003.
But some ministers have also stressed the need to rebuild the country’s debt-ridden finances.
Japan’s public debt is the highest among industrialized nations after the government spent trillions of yen on emergency spending packages to try to haul the economy out of the doldrums in the 1990s.
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