Japan to cut public debt but goals remain unclear

The Japanese government on Thursday set a new goal of reducing the ratio of Japan's public debt to gross domestic product from fiscal 2021, but the feasibility of the target remained unclear amid ballooning social security costs due to the aging of the population, said local media. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration pledged in its long- term economic and fiscal policy blueprints to halve the ratio of the primary balance deficit to the country's GDP by fiscal 2015 from the level in fiscal 2010 and turn the balance into a surplus by fiscal 2020, according to Kyodo News Agency. By committing to fiscal rehabilitation, the government is attempting to prevent growing concern over the nation's fiscal discipline from triggering a spike in longer-term interest rates, said Kyodo News. The government also said in the blueprints presented at a meeting of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy on Thursday that it will review social security costs with nothing off-limits. The Cabinet plans to endorse the policy blueprints on Friday, along with its growth strategy, one of the "three arrows" of the prime minister's economic policies, dubbed "Abenomics," including drastic monetary easing by the Bank of Japan and massive fiscal spending, according to the report.