The two frontrunners in the race to head the ruling party have shunned the government’s push for more people to invest in the nation’s stock market.
Neither agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi nor right-leaning lawmaker Sanae Takaichi, the top polling candidates for leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party, hold investments in equity or any other securities, according to their offices. The winner of the contest on Saturday will almost certainly be chosen as Japan’s next prime minister to replace Shigeru Ishiba.
The government has encouraged stock ownership through tax-free Nippon Individual Savings Accounts as a way to steer savings into higher-return investments against a backdrop of rising inflation. The absence of stock holdings by the candidates bucks against this trend of rising stock ownership among Japanese, whose holdings have risen to the highest since the 1990s.
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