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Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet on Friday endorsed its growth strategy, the last of the three arrows of Abe's economic policies, dubbed "Abenomics," aiming to end Japan's nearly two decades of deflation.
The government also approved longer-term economic and fiscal policy blueprints in which it set a new goal of reducing the ratio of Japan's public debt to gross domestic product from fiscal 2021 in a stable manner.
"The Growth Strategy decided today will be the start line," said Abe in a video message on the growth strategy.
"I will restore a strong economy. Fully determined, I have launched three "arrows," which are my three prongs of economic revival," Abe said.
But most of the policy proposals in the strategy do not break new ground and the blueprints give no details on how to pave the way to sound public finances, failing to map out concrete steps to simultaneously attain economic growth and fiscal consolidation, said local media reports.
In the strategy approved Friday, the government set the goal of augmenting the total amount of business investment by 10 percent during the next three years to bring it up to around 70 trillion yen.
It promised to boost Japan's per-capita gross national income by more than 1.5 million yen in 10 years, while trying to increase the percentage of the nation's trade with countries with which it has signed free trade agreements to 70 percent by 2018, up from the current 19 percent.
The government will aim to double the scale of its crop exports to 1 trillion yen by 2020, with an eye on Japan's entry into talks on the U.S.-led tariff-cutting pact Trans-Pacific Partnership(TPP).
The government will also try to triple exports of infrastructure-related business to 30 trillion yen by 2020, with Abe trying to promote sales of Japanese state-of-the-art technologies and products.
The strategy also stipulated that Abe's administration will allow online sales of over-the-counter drugs in Japan, set up special economic zones in which deregulation can be promoted, and restart idled nuclear power plants.
In the blueprints, the administration pledged to halve the ratio of the primary balance deficit to the country's GDP by fiscal 2015 from the level in fiscal 2010 and turn the balance into a surplus by fiscal 2020.
In the run-up to the House of Councilors election this summer, Abe would struggle to maintain the optimism that has surrounded his economic policies, centering on the growth strategy together with drastic monetary easing and large-scale public works projects, said Kyodo News Agency.
"I will be certain to bring stability to politics, and in the autumn I will launch the second round of the Growth Strategy," said Abe.
The government will submit to the Diet a bill for drastic reductions in taxes on investments and another to strengthen industrial competitiveness, Abe said, adding that the Diet to convene in the autumn will move forward as the "Diet to Execute the Growth Strategy."
