• TIN TỨC
• VIDEO

TOKYO - Japan's government Friday pledged to create five million new jobs through a 10-year economic growth strategy centered on green technology, health care, tourism and closer links with Asia.

The center-left government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who took office last week, has pledged to end two decades of stagnation in Asia's biggest economy and achieve stable real economic growth above 2.0 percent a year.

In the short term, the government aims to beat deflation by late fiscal 2011 and boost weak demand while bringing unemployment down from about five percent now to below four percent soon and then down to three percent.

Japan is also eyeing lowering the corporate tax rate, from an effective 40 percent now, to the average level of major industrialized nations which is around 25 percent, possibly from fiscal 2011, the strategy paper says.

Kan, a former left-wing activist who most recently served as finance minister, has promised a "third way" approach for the economy, which is expected to slip behind China soon to global number three spot.

The premier has identified the "first way" as the heavy infrastructure spending of the 1980s and 90s, much of it pork-barrel projects that drove up public debt and left many 'white elephant' projects of dubious economic value.

Kan has also rejected as the "second way" the "excessive market fundamentalism" of former premier Junichiro Koizumi which aimed to slim down government but also weakened social safety and widened income disparities.

In a speech last week, Kan outlined his "third way" policies -- an ambitious approach that would strengthen domestic demand and jobs while also boosting the social security system and reducing the public fiscal deficit.

(Tuoitrenews)