Abenomics short on real reforms after one year
Prime minister's stimulus measures have cut into yen strength, but he has yet to take bold steps needed to increase Japan's business confidence
One year into Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic revival plan, the message from Japan's industrial heartland and economists is clear: he has yet to act on his pledge to stage the nation's comeback as a global economic dynamo.
Abe's recipe of massive money printing, fiscal stimulus twinned with longer-run consolidation and pro-growth policies has already made it into economic vernacular as "Abenomics" and won praise for its initial "print and spend" stage.
But the longer it takes for Abe and his team to follow through with powerful incentives for businesses to take chances, innovate and grow, the bigger the risk that Japan will slide back into the stagnation that has dogged it for the past two decades. And with more debt than ever.
The first two arrows of Abe's "three arrow" plan reversed crippling yen strength, buoyed market and business sentiment, got prices moving up after 15 years of deflation and set Japan on course to outpace most of its peers for two years in a row.
We frown when we hear about Abenomics. We’re not feeling any effects of it
Yet Abe swept to power on December 16 last year promising much more, namely to defy the gravitational pull of Japan's ageing and shrinking population with sweeping reforms to secure sustained, broad-based growth that has eluded Japan for two decades.
