{"text":[[{"start":7.8,"text":"Sanae Takaichi has set out a ¥370tn ($2.3tn) investment roadmap for Japan in the biggest policy move since her pledge to build a “strong and prosperous archipelago” helped secure an election landslide in February."}],[{"start":22.25,"text":"The prime minister’s 14-year spending blueprint, which is Japan’s largest-ever and longest-term such plan, combines public and private investment in 17 strategic sectors of the economy and includes more than $600bn for AI and semiconductors."}],[{"start":36.8,"text":"The scale of the plan, along with concerns around the state’s capacity to efficiently allocate capital, revived questions about how Takaichi plans to pay for the implied fiscal expansion."}],[{"start":48.05,"text":"Yields on Japanese government bonds surged to multi-decade highs in late May amid market expectations that the prime minister’s spending plans would require greater government borrowing. Yields have since fallen back slightly."}],[{"start":61.849999999999994,"text":"The government set out details of the plan on Thursday, a day after Takaichi announced its broad thrust in a speech. In it, she repeated her assertion that Japan’s economic problems did not stem from a failure of the workforce or from a lack of innovation or efficiency. "}],[{"start":79,"text":"“What is lacking is domestic investment,” she said, adding that the government would fully support companies that possessed world-leading technologies in sectors such as shipbuilding, solar cells, quantum computers and next-generation nuclear reactors."}],[{"start":94.15,"text":"“The Takaichi cabinet will break the cycle of excessive austerity and insufficient investment in the future,” she said."}],[{"start":101.30000000000001,"text":"Euphoria around Takaichi’s premiership has been dented by persistently rising prices. Voter approval for her cabinet, according to a Kyodo opinion poll earlier this week, has fallen from a peak after the February general election but is still 55.8 per cent — high by historic standards."}],[{"start":120.00000000000001,"text":"Economists said the investment plan was short on hard detail about how the spending would be divided between companies and the government, but that it represented a clear statement of Takaichi’s fundamental view on what Japan needs to grow."}],[{"start":134.3,"text":"Takeshi Yamaguchi, chief Japan economist at Morgan Stanley MUFG, noted that Takaichi’s plan had been set out at a time when the economy was emerging from deflation and had achieved sustained nominal GDP growth. Its fiscal position was improving and tax revenues were growing, allowing a potentially bolder approach to spending."}],[{"start":154.75,"text":"“Against this backdrop, a shift from the traditional deflation-era budgeting approach towards one based on a medium to long-term perspective . . . could represent a major turning point in Japan’s fiscal management,” said Yamaguchi."}],[{"start":168.95,"text":"Other observers said the plan, as currently set out, did not provide enough detail to judge how much additional economic benefit it would create or how large the burden on the public purse would be."}],[{"start":179.6,"text":"The plan suggests that the government will channel ¥10tn a year into the selected 17 sectors, less than half the investment envisaged. But analysts said the difficulty of predicting corporate spending plans over the 14-year timeframe made it hard to judge how much of the roadmap would be followed."}],[{"start":203.9,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1782430285_1326.mp3"}