Japanese firms need to raise salaries in order to put the economy on a firmer footing, the head of the nation's top business lobby said on Monday before annual wage talks shift into full swing in February.
"I would like to ask companies with robust earnings to think positively about increasing wages, including bonuses and extra pay," Sadayuki Sakakibara, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, also known as Keidanren, told a forum in Tokyo.
"I believe the business community should try to take a further step," he said, echoing repeated calls by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for wage hikes to support his "Abenomics" policies for revitalizing the economy, which fell back into recession last year following a consumption tax hike in April.