Prime Minister Takaichi orders revision of fiscal surplus target from single year to multi-year period… Concerns raised over “unlimited expansion of expenditures”

On the 22nd, Prime Minister Takaichi held a meeting of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, which she chairs, at the Prime Minister's Office and instructed the council to consider revising the government's fiscal consolidation goals. The aim is to revise the previous goal of achieving a single-year primary balance surplus for the national and local governments and to increase spending flexibility, but there are strong concerns that this will push fiscal consolidation further away.