[ 2013-08-11 ]

¥1,000,000,000,000,000 - the size of Japan's national debt
Japan's eye-watering national debt has topped one
quadrillion yen, official data showed Friday, a
record figure that underlines Tokyo's struggle to
curb its huge borrowing.

The figure supplied by the finance ministry of
¥1.008 quadrillion, or a thousand trillion by the
end of June amounts to about £6.71 trillion at
current exchange rates. By comparison, Britain's
national debt is £1.2 trillion.

Tokyo has the dubious distinction of having,
proportionately, the biggest debt pile among
industrialised nations, more than twice the size
of its economy.

The lion's share of that debt is from long- and
short-term Japanese government bonds, as well as
other borrowing.

The staggering figure, about 1.7pc higher than the
previous quarter, comes a day after Japan pledged
to slash its budget and get spending under
control.


Japan has not faced a public debt crisis like the
kind seen across the debt-riddled eurozone,
largely because most of its low-interest debt is
held domestically rather than by international
creditors.

But the International Monetary Fund and others
have issued warnings about Tokyo's ever-increasing
borrowing, after a series of sovereign credit
rating downgrades in recent years.

This week, the IMF called on Japan to adopt a
"credible" fiscal plan to repair its books,
including raising sales taxes to generate new
revenue.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government is mulling
whether to go ahead with a series of sales tax
rises that would double the rate to 10 percent by
2015, a key source of new income but one that some
fear would stall his economy-boosting plan dubbed
"Abenomics".

Source - AFP

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