The Cabinet Office on Sept. 9 revised upward gross domestic product growth for the April-June period. Encouraged by this, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears poised to raise the consumption tax rate from the current 5 percent to 8 percent from April 2014.
But his administration must answer many questions related to the consumption tax raise.
On Aug. 12, the office said that GDP in real terms increased 0.6 percent in the April-June period from the previous quarter, for an annualized 2.6 percent. It now has raised the figures to 0.9 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively.