After six months of racking their brains, members of a prime ministerial advisory council have produced yet another blueprint designed to nurse the seriously ill Japanese economy back to health. The worthy work of the Economic Strategy Council should be commended. In their final report to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, which was delivered on Friday, the 10 eminent business leaders, economists and scholars who labored under Mr. Hirotaro Higuchi, the venerable chairman of Asahi Breweries, Ltd., have drawn up a comprehensive agenda for reviving the Japanese economy.
Fundamentally, the council believes that the nation's economic problem is curable. Despite all the news of doom and gloom, the Japanese economy still has a solid foundation. Japan is still a major force in the fields of advanced technology. Most Japanese employers can still count on a disciplined labor force. Years of saving and investment have turned the nation's financial assets into the envy of the world: 1,200 trillion yen in domestic savings and 100 trillion yen in net overseas assets. With such economic fundamentals, the council believes that the nation's economy has the potential to achieve annual growth of 2 percent despite nearly zero growth in population.
The strategic agenda for attaining that goal consists of three stages: The first stage is the 1999-2000 period, during which the utmost effort should be exerted to achieve economic recovery and stabilization of the financial system by resolving the debilitating legacies of the economic bubble. This is necessary because the council's diagnosis is that the current economic stagnation has been aggravated by the bursting of the bubble and the resulting bad-loan crisis.