Analysis - Japan's mission impossible: to spend $100 billion in 15 months
(Reuters) - What do you buy the nation that already seems to have everything?
That is the question facing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he aims to spend more than $100 billion (65.5 billion pounds) on infrastructure in the next 15 months to help revive his country's economy. But with its gleaming bullet trains, jungles of elevated highways and strings of man-made islands, ultra-modern Japan doesn't appear to want for much.
"We cannot simply continue to build roads and infrastructure the way we used to at a time when the population is ageing and shrinking," says Takayoshi Igarashi, a public policy professor at Japan's Hosei University who has advised the previous Democrat administration on rebuilding from the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear accident.
Infrastructure spending tops Abe's economic agenda alongside nudging the central bank into more aggressive steps to end deflation. Since he took power in December, Abe has earmarked 10 trillion yen (70.1 billion pounds) for new infrastructure and upgrades over the next 15 months - half of it funded by government debt.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/02/21/uk-japan-construction-idUKBRE91K1BK20130221
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