Ex-aide to Abe denies intent to influence labor statistics

February 15, 2019

Tokyo--A former aide to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament on Friday that his notification to the labor ministry in 2015 of "recognition of issues" with its monthly labor survey was not intended to press the ministry to adopt an inappropriate survey method.

At a House of Representatives committee meeting, Motoya Nakae, currently director-general of the Finance Ministry's Customs and Tariff Bureau, admitted that he communicated recognition of issues when he was told by the labor ministry that a planned reshuffle of sample businesses could greatly affect survey results.

Hiranao Honda of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan argued that bureaucrats could feel pressure to dress up data if they were told by an aide to the prime minister of such awareness of issues.

Nakae claimed that at the time he meant to underscore the need to look at possible revisions to make the key labor survey reflect actual economic conditions more correctly.

He said that he understood a change in sampling was a technical issue and thus stopped short of reporting this matter to Abe.

The ministry started data adjustments in the survey for January 2018, leading to apparent rises in wage figures.

The monthly labor survey is at the center of an ongoing governmentwide statistics scandal.

After a string of revelations, opposition parties have suggested that government-claimed achievements of Abenomics, the prime minister's reflationary policy agenda, may have been faked. Jiji Press