By Daniel Leussink
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will order his government to compile extra economic stimulus measures as early as in November, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The move would signal the government’s readiness to deploy more support to cushion the economy from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused significant disruption to consumers and businesses in the country.
The economic measures could focus on supporting tourism and the restaurant industry, which have suffered from declining consumption, the newspaper said.
The government may also consider extending a “Go To Travel” initiative of subsidised domestic tourism as part of the stimulus, Nikkei added, without saying how it obtained the information.
Japan has already rolled out a combined $2.2 trillion of fiscal stimulus in response to the health crisis, including cash payouts to households and loans to small businesses which were partly funded through two supplementary budgets.
The government could decide in late December on a draft of a third extra budget to fund the expected measures, at the same time as it draws up a draft for the annual budget for the next fiscal year, the Nikkei said.
The world’s third-largest economy has started to recover from the impact the virus crisis had on demand at home and abroad, including the hit to global trade which hurt Japan’s exports of cars and other manufactured products.
The government last Wednesday said economic activity likely stopped contracting in August.
(Reporting by Daniel Leussink; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Christopher Cushing)
