New economy and fiscal policy minister Nobuteru Ishihara vowed Friday to pour his utmost efforts into Abenomics and ease public anxiety over the economy after Akira Amari¡¯s sudden resignation.
¡°I will work hard to accomplish Abenomics so that more people can actually feel the benefits of a positive growth cycle,¡± Ishihara said at his first news conference a day after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appointed him to replace the scandal-sunk Amari.
¡°I will put my heart and soul into on it,¡± he said.
Admitting the public is anxious about the future of the economy after Amari, one of the architects of Abe¡¯s unorthodox deflation-busting strategy, based on the Bank of Japan¡¯s unprecedented and aggressive quantitative monetary easing, Ishihara pledged to brush off such concerns.
Ishihara, a longtime associate of Abe and the eldest son of outspoken former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, is known as a policy-oriented politician but his experience on economic and trade matters is limited.
Concern also remains over whether Ishihara can hit the ground running on the transformative Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation free trade agreement hammered out last year. Amari was the only Cabinet member privy to the closed-door negotiations.
Ishihara, 58, was formerly a TV reporter. He has held various posts in the Cabinet, including land and infrastructure minister and minister for administrative reform. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Liberal Democratic Party¡¯s presidential races in 2008 and 2012.
Like his nationalist father, former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, he has come under fire a few times for making controversial remarks.
In 2014, when he was environment chief, he told reporters money would eventually convince residents near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to host storage sites for radiation-tainted waste.
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