The government said in a statement that the money covers a one-year period but did not specify which year, only that it would be offered by 2020.
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The move means Japan’s annual provision from both the public and private sectors will rise to 1.3 trillion yen (around $10.6 billion) in 2020.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced the plan as he prepares for climate change talks in Paris that begin Monday. Yoshihide Suga, the administration’s top spokesman, said Japan will honor its goal of reducing the deficit when compiling the budget.
Japan is getting impatient for higher wages.
Japan relapsed into recession in July-September and consumer price measures have slid on oil price falls and weak household spending, casting doubt on the BOJ’s view that a solid economic recovery will accelerate inflation to its 2 percent target by early 2017.
Yesterday’s figures showed that core inflation, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, fell 0.1 per cent last month, marking the third consecutive monthly decline.
The government will also strengthen policies to get more women into the workforce and ease regulations to encourage corporate investment and breathe new life into an economy that has struggled with patchy domestic demand. Average incomes also fell 0.9 percent, indicating that employers are hiring more workers for lesser pay.
Separately, government data showed Thursday that Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions shrank 3.0 percent in fiscal 2014 from the previous year to 1.37 billion tons, the first drop in five years.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has joined other politicians, like the UK’s finance minister George Osborne in seeking to raise the minimum wage as a way to counter the stagnation of incomes at the bottom, reported The Financial Times.
Big companies, reaping record profits thanks to strong export earnings, can afford that.
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“The labour market is quite tight, so the situation is improving for households with working people”, said Masamichi Adachi, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co and a former central bank official. “If they have to raise wages their losses will grow and they will find it hard to survive”, he said.
