TOKYO: Japan's Kaoru Yosano, who is in charge of the country's economic and fiscal policy, on Saturday suggested a planned rise in consumption tax could be implemented in around 2015.Yosano is an advocate of rebuilding the country's debt-ridden finances by hiking taxes, an idea shared with centre-left Prime Minister Naoto Kan who has placed him in charge of leading financial reforms.
The former Liberal Democratic Party finance minister said in a television interview: "When I was with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the figure of 2015 was being discussed."He did not elaborate on how much higher the tax would be from the current five percent.
Yosano also suggested the was likely to stay unchanged at least until 2013 unless Kan calls for a snap election."The ruling Democratic Party of Japan has a policy of not raising the rate for four years since the 2009 general elections," Yosano said.
"We cannot raise the rate drastically all at once," he said. "We need to make a judgment if the economic circumstances can tolerate a tax hike."His remarks came after Standard & Poor's on Thursday cut Japan's credit rating for the first time since 2002, accusing the government of lacking a "coherent strategy" to ease the highest debt of any industrialised nation.
The US credit risk appraiser cut its rating on Japan's long-term sovereign debt to "AA minus" from "AA", saying it expected the country's groaning fiscal deficits to stay high in coming years.Japan's debt mountain is the biggest in the industrialised world, sitting at 200 percent of gross domestic product.
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