The demand created by reconstruction work in the disaster-hit northeast should be used to drag the economy out of deflation, non-Cabinet members on the government's National Strategy Council have proposed.
The members also proposed that the government promote bilateral economic partnership agreements to jump-start economic growth, a draft plan showed Wednesday.
The 13-member panel, which is led by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and plays a crucial role in compiling government policies, has six Cabinet members, including Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura and national policy minister Motohisa Furukawa. The panel aims by year's end to map out medium- and long-term national strategies based on the draft proposal.
According to the draft plan to be submitted to the panel's second meeting next week, demand generated by reconstruction in the Tohoku region is expected to continue through fiscal 2013, providing "a big opportunity" to revitalize the economy.
The government and the Bank of Japan should work together to help pull Japan out of deflation, it added.
To spur economic growth, the draft plan also called for strengthening the agriculture industry by involving more young people, promoting trade in the environmental field and boosting medical tourism.
To spread the benefits of economic growth more evenly among social groups, the plan also proposed efforts be made to improve working environments for women and the elderly, and to increase the number of foreign students in Japan to 300,000.
The government aims to compile a more detailed plan, tentatively called the "Japan Revitalization Strategy," by the middle of 2012.