Prime Minister Taro Aso plans to make concessions on the government's plan to hike the 5 percent sales tax in fiscal 2011, as opposition to fixing a date grows within his Liberal Democratic Party, sources in the LDP said Wednesday.
Aso plans to offer two ideas in an additional clause for insertion into a bill aimed at amending the tax system. One states that legislation and other steps will be taken by 2011 so the government can hike the tax if the economy recovers by then. The other states that the date for the tax hike will be stipulated in a separate law, the sources said.
Kosuke Hori, chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council, and senior lawmakers from the LDP tax panel visited Aso Wednesday to convey their views, the sources said.
His staff was later expected to formulate a draft and present it Thursday at a meeting of the party's treasury and finance division. It is not clear how lawmakers opposed to setting a tax hike date will take Aso's concessions.
If approved, the government will endorse the bill at a Cabinet meeting Friday.
At the meeting with the LDP executives, Aso said, "I would like (the party) to stick to the basic line of raising the tax from fiscal 2011 at the earliest" and avoid straying from the remarks he made during Diet deliberations, the sources said.
The party executives also asked Aso to reflect internal LDP debate when drafting the clause so members can support him, and Aso accepted that, the sources said.