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Business Daily: Japan's Abenomics Experiment

Japan's Abenomics Experiment

14/04/2015

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Japan's Abenomics Experiment

For 20 years, Japan's been trapped in deflation and negativity. Has Abenomics helped?

For 20 years, Japan's been trapped in a cycle of deflation. But has Abenomics helped? We hear from one indusrty feeling left behind, and a banker who's more optimistic.

We examine Abenomics, Japan's bold economic experiment. For more than 20 years the country has been trapped in a cycle of falling prices and negative growth - the lost decades, they call them. But since 2012, the government, with its Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has been throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at the economy, hoping to kick-start it back into life. 

Who's benefitting from all this? Well it seems some city-dwellers are back in work, women especially, but some poorer communities, like the seaweed harvesters of Futtsu, continue to feel the pinch. We hear from them, from the government, and from one former banker, Seijiro Takeshita, who's returned after a quarter of a century working abroad, who says that, despite his country's struggles, there is light at the end of its long, dark tunnel. Finally, Jonathan Allum, a strategist at the Japanese investment firm, SMBC Nikko Capital Markets, gives an overrall verdict on the achievements of Abenomics.

Image: Shinzo Abe. Credit: AP

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