Japan's international balance of payments for fiscal 2001, released by the Finance Ministry on May 15, highlighted a year-on-year fall in the trade and current account surpluses. But it also revealed a 24.4 percent increase in the nation's income surplus to a record-high 8.68 trillion yen.
The income surplus was 2.2 times larger than the surplus in goods and services trade, which tumbled 24.7 percent from the previous year to 3.89 trillion yen. That's a sharp difference from fiscal 2000, when the income surplus was only 10 percent larger than the goods and services balance.
These figures show that the structure of Japan's international balance of payments has changed substantially, reflecting a major transformation in its economic structure. In a positive light, one could call it the result of Japan's economy maturing. But to me, the statistics clearly portray an economy in desperate need of structural adjustment.