Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's attempt to bolster the country's moribund economy with a ¥28.1 trillion stimulus package Tuesday has experts asking whether massive government spending is really the best medicine for a country with snowballing debts.
Some economists see the fresh round of stimulus as a positive sign since it includes investments that could facilitate future growth, saying it appears to differ from past measures that tended to focus solely on short-term boosts to the economy using pork-barrel policies.
If the economic situation needs immediate support, or if a natural disaster strikes, the government should quickly draft an extra budget and implement stimulus, said Taro Saito, senior economist at NLI Research Institute. Otherwise, he said, it should refrain from doing so, given that Japan's debts are more than 200 percent of gross domestic product.