TOKYO – On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida promised to take steps to soften the blow of rising electricity bills and make the most of the benefits of a weak yen for the economy, such as by bringing tourists back to Japan.
In a policy speech to Parliament, Kishida said that the government will focus on dealing with rising inflation and the fallout from the recent sharp drops in the value of the yen. He also said that reviving the economy was his “top priority.”
“The risk that electricity bills will go up sharply next spring is a big problem that Japan will have to deal with. “We will take unprecedented, bold measures that directly ease the burden on households and companies,” Kishida said.
He said that by the end of this month, the government will put together a set of steps to “protect people’s livelihoods from rising prices.”
Kishida also said that Japan will fully open its borders to people from other countries on October 11. This is to bring back inbound tourism, which had stopped because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We will aggressively pursue policy measures to get the most out of a weak yen,” he said, with the goal of having foreign tourists spend more than 5 trillion yen ($35 billion) a year in Japan.
Kishida said that Japan would also try to bring in chip and battery factories and boost exports of agricultural goods as ways to take advantage of the weak yen.
The government of Kishida is under pressure to take steps to soften the blow to the economy from the weak yen, which helps exporters make more money but hurts households by making the already high cost of importing fuel and raw materials even higher.
Japan bought yen on the foreign exchange market for the first time since 1998 on September 22. This was done to help the yen recover after the central bank refused to raise interest rates and kept them very low.
($1 = 144.7500 yen)
