TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s finance ministry will kick off on Monday the first meeting of a newly-established panel of experts to discuss national debt management, it said.
The five-member study group, as it is called, consists of outside experts, including the head of fixed income group at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities and professors at prominent universities.
“While receiving opinions and advice from highly knowledgeable persons, we will begin discussions including technical aspects,” the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday, without elaborating.
Japan’s public debt is twice the size of its economy after years of fiscal stimulus, including recent efforts to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, have strained public finances, making fiscal reform an urgent task.
(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
