Candidate to lead Japan’s ruling party promises more stimulus
Tokyo, Sep 8 (EFE).- Former Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, who aspires to lead Japan’s ruling party and become the next prime minister, promised more economic stimuli Wednesday and more social aid to overcome the impact of the pandemic.
Kishida explained his economic program at a press conference called Wednesday in Tokyo, ahead of internal elections to be held Sep. 29 by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
From these elections the new leader of the conservative party and candidate to be the next chief executive for the general elections will be held before the end of November.
“The economic gap will widen if we continue doing the same things that we have been doing,” said Kishida, who for the moment is among the favorites to lead the party, among those who have made their candidacies public.
Kishida pointed to a shift in economic policies if he wins the internal and national elections, though he also valued the outcomes existing policies known as “Abenomics” have provided, launched by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after coming to power in 2012.
He mentioned the need for more aid for families with children, to support peripheral regional economies and support businesses and individuals that have been most economically affected by the pandemic.
Last week, Kishida had signaled that an additional stimulus package of “10s of trillions of yen” (10s of billions of dollars) would need to be rolled out to steer the economic recovery.
The candidate to lead the party has fueled the expectations that the new leader of the party and presumably next prime minister of Japan will resort to economic stimuli even greater than those applied by Japan.
These expectations have boosted the Tokyo Stock Exchange since Friday, when the current leader of the party and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced he would not stand for re-election.
The Tokyo stock market has accumulated consecutive increases since, and closed Wednesday above the psychological barrier of 30,000 points for the first time in five months. EFE
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