http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-24/abe-declares-end-of-deflation-as-growth-plan-confronts-skeptics.html
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the deflation that wiped out much of Japan’s growth the past 15 years and so stunted the economy that it slipped to No. 3 behind China, has ended and will be thwarted by new government policies designed to encourage business expansion.
“Through bold monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy and the growth strategy we have reached a stage where there is no deflation,” Abe, 59, said in an interview yesterday at the prime minister’s official residence in Tokyo. With the first sales tax rise since 1997 that took effect in April, “this was an extremely difficult time for management of the economy, but I believe we were somehow able to overcome it.”
Abe was speaking before his cabinet endorsed the most specific measures yet to deliver on his growth strategy -- the third part of a campaign to end declines in consumer prices and stoke investment. The government plans corporate-tax cuts, trade liberalization, reduced barriers for agricultural land consolidation, special zones of lighter regulation and the study of casinos as a way of spurring record numbers of tourists.
The steps are part of Abe’s strategy to restore Japan’s influence in a region where China is the dominant power. A strengthened economy would boost Japan’s appeal to nations from the Philippines to India as a counterweight to China, which caused concern among neighbors pressing its claims on disputed territories.
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