Japan's government will set aside $26 billion for new child care measures, slightly more than earlier estimated, in a move likely to add more debt to the industrial world's heaviest public debt burden.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has vowed to double such spending over the next three years to arrest the country's dwindling birth rate, even if that means further aggravating the government's fiscal position.
The measures are aimed at supporting higher education, preventing child abuse in poverty, and ensuring medical care for handicapped children, Economy Minister Shigeyuki Goto cited Kishida as telling the ministers' meeting.Japan is already the industrial world's most indebted government with public debt that is more than double the size of its economy.
"The talk of this budget comes at delicate time when the government tries to bring in the primary budget surplus while government debt balloons,' said Koya Miyamae, senior economist at SMBC Nikko Securities.
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