Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe today loosed the “third arrow” in his efforts to jump-start growth with a sweeping blueprint of economic reform.
Abe has already unleashed the first two from his quiver — a major public spending programme and vast money-printing efforts to bring inflation down to 2%.
He today set out reforms to bring more women into the workforce, promote industrial innovation and tempt cash-hoarding companies into investing, in a bid to help Japan break free of the deflationary trap in which it has been mired for two decades. He also declared war on Japan’s notorious bureaucracy.
Bizarrely invoking a classic arcade game, he added: “To achieve this will be like Whack-A-Mole. There is no end.”
Investors were less impressed as the Nikkei fell 3.8%. ETX Capital strategist Ishaq Siddiqi said: “There was little on pushing government pension funds to increase their exposure to domestic equities and overseas assets.”
