LDP’s Kishida calls for consumption tax hike as planned

March 21, 2018

Hong Kong- Fumio Kishida, policy chief of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, called for the consumption tax in the nation to be raised to 10 pct from the current 8 pct as planned in October 2019.

"It's natural that the tax will be increased, after we proposed changing the use of some of the revenue from the hike during the campaigning" for last October's election for the House of Representatives, the all-important lower chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament, he said at an event for investors in Hong Kong.

Kishida, chairman of the LDP's Policy Research Council, said the party's leadership election in autumn this year will be "a precious opportunity to think about whom we should choose as our leader and how its leadership structure should be toward next year."

Kishida, who is viewed as a candidate for the LDP's next leader to succeed its current president, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, stopped short of making clear whether he would run in the upcoming party race.

Still, he stressed that he wants to contribute to stabilizing the economic and other situations in Japan.

Kishida said the Bank of Japan's current ultraeasy monetary policy is expected to continue for the time being, but "cannot be kept in place forever."

On a strategy on exit from the policy, Kishida said, "We need to study the timing and a specific method partly by taking measures in the United States and Europe into consideration."

Discussing economic policies, Kishida said, "It's important to show targets and projections in order to help dispel people's concerns about the future," while emphasizing the need to work on fiscal consolidation "a little more seriously."

On the diplomatic front, Kishida underscored the significance of firmly sticking to the goal of achieving the "verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," referring to a planned summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late April and a meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump, which is expected to be held by May. Jiji Press