The government's fiscal plan to be released by June may include a numerical goal for reducing the ratio of debt to gross domestic product, national strategy minister Yoshito Sengoku said.
"We need to consider steadily reducing the accumulated long-term public debt relative to GDP once the economy returns to cruising speed," Sengoku, 64, said in a recent interview. "We need to show some sort of numerical target" in the midterm fiscal framework, he said.
Japan's debt has come under more scrutiny since Standard & Poor's cut its outlook on the country's AA sovereign rating in January, a move Sengoku described at the time as a "wakeup call" to repair the nation's finances.