For anyone wondering when the Finance Ministry will start to put the nation's debt-ridden public finances in order, Vice Minister Toshiro Muto has the clear answer: Whenever the politicians are ready.
Given that the economy has not fully recovered, "I don't think we can conduct a deflationary fiscal policy unless there is a national consensus, or more specifically, a political decision," Muto said Friday at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo.
"We are ready to begin what needs to be done whenever we are given the order by politicians or there is a national determination," the ministry's top bureaucrat added.
Citing two decades of efforts by Washington to reduce the U.S. budget deficit, he indicated Japan will also need to radically increase tax revenues and cut spending.
But the ministry cannot even initiate a public debate on fiscal reconstruction, he said, because such a debate itself would have "political meaning."
Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has been saying his priority is to achieve a fully-fledged economic recovery, but he has yet to present a vision for fiscal reconstruction.
Japan has the worst public finances of all the major industrialized countries. This year, the central and local governments are expected to post an estimated combined budget deficit worth 8.5 percent of gross domestic product. Their outstanding long-term debts came to 608 trillion yen -- or 123 percent of GDP -- as of the end of March.