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  • 11-January-2024

    English

    Japan needs to rebuild fiscal space, address population ageing and reinvigorate productivity growth

    Japan’s economy has recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic but faces new challenges from weak global trade prospects. Policy should now focus on ensuring fiscal sustainability, boosting productivity growth, and addressing the economic and social impacts of rapid population ageing.

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  • 17-November-2020

    English

    The impact of COVID-19 on SME financing - A special edition of the OECD Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs Scoreboard

    The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on SME access to finance. In particular, the sudden drop in revenues created acute liquidity shortages, threatening the survival of many viable businesses. The report documents an increase in demand for bank lending in the first half of 2020, and a steady supply of credit thanks to government interventions. On the other hand, other sources of finance declined, in particular early-stage equity. This paper, a special edition of Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs, focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on SME access to finance, along with government policy responses. It reveals that the pre-crisis financing environment was broadly favourable for SMEs and entrepreneurs, who benefited from low interest rates, loose credit standards and an increasingly diverse offer of financing instruments. It documents the unprecedented scope and scale of the policy responses undertaken by governments world-wide, and details their key characteristics, and outlines the principal issues and policy challenges for the next phases of the pandemic, such as the over-indebtedness of SMEs and the need to continue to foster a diverse range of financing instruments for SMEs.
  • 14-April-2020

    English

    Synthesising good practices in fiscal federalism - Key recommendations from 15 years of country surveys

    The design of intergovernmental fiscal relations can help to ensure that tax and spending powers are assigned in a way to promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Decentralisation can enable sub-central governments to provide better public services for households and firms, while it can also make intergovernmental frameworks more complex, harming equity. The challenges of fiscal federalism are multi-faceted and involve difficult trade-offs. This synthesis paper consolidates much of the OECD’s work on fiscal federalism over the past 15 years, with a particular focus on OECD Economic Surveys. The paper identifies a range of good practices on the design of country policies and institutions related strengthening fiscal capacity delineating responsibilities across evels of government and improving intergovernmental co-ordination.
  • 18-April-2018

    English

    Japan: Promoting Inclusive Growth for an Ageing Society

    Japan has achieved a comparatively high level of well-being: skill levels are high, unemployment is low and life expectancy at birth is the highest in the OECD. Since its launch in 2013, Abenomics has had a positive effect on the economy, and per capita output growth has picked up. However, to achieve inclusive growth and greater well-being, Japan needs to address important challenges to foster fiscal sustainability, narrow the productivity gap with leading OECD countries and manage the demographic transition. A new fiscal plan going beyond achieving a primary surplus should lay out concrete measures to raise revenues and control spending. As Japan’s population ages, using all available talent in the labour market and achieving gender equality are key to overcome labour shortages. Boosting productivity, which has been stagnant, will require increasing returns from R&D, capitalising on the digital economy, fostering the dynamism of SMEs, and reducing barriers to foreign direct investment and trade to promote greater integration into global value chains. Japan’s education system is one of the top performers in the OECD, but there is scope to further invest in teachers and schools. Finally, further action to foster green growth and environmental quality as well as effectively leveraging upcoming international sports events, such as the Rugby World Cup 2019 and the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2020, would also boost local development and inclusive growth. The complementarity of reforms needed to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth in in an aging society makes a compelling case for a comprehensive approach.
  • 4-October-2017

    English

    Ensuring fiscal sustainability in Japan in the context of a shrinking and ageing population

    With gross government debt of 219% of GDP in 2016, Japan’s fiscal situation is in uncharted territory and puts the economy at risk.

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  • 28-September-2017

    English

    Boosting productivity for inclusive growth in Japan

    Never in the past 30 years has productivity growth been lower than since the 2008 global financial crisis, and never has income inequality been higher than it is today in Japan, and in the OECD area

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  • 20-July-2017

    English

    Revenue Statistics in Asian Countries 2017 - Trends in Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore

    The Revenue Statistics in Asian Countries publication is jointly undertaken by the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration and the OECD Development Centre, with the co-operation of the Asian Development Bank and with the financial support of the European Union. It compiles comparable tax revenue statistics for Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. The model is the OECD Revenue Statistics database which is a fundamental reference, backed by a well-established methodology, for OECD member countries. Extending the OECD methodology to Asian countries enables comparisons about tax levels and tax structures on a consistent basis, both among Asian economies and between OECD and Asian economies.
  • 20-July-2017

    English

    Revenue Statistics in Asian Countries 2017 - Trends in Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore

    The Revenue Statistics in Asian Countries publication is jointly undertaken by the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration and the OECD Development Centre, with the co-operation of the Asian Development Bank and with the financial support of the European Union. It compiles comparable tax revenue statistics for Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. The model is the OECD Revenue Statistics database which is a fundamental reference, backed by a well-established methodology, for OECD member countries. Extending the OECD methodology to Asian countries enables comparisons about tax levels and tax structures on a consistent basis, both among Asian economies and between OECD and Asian economies.
  • 29-November-2016

    English

    Revenue Statistics in Asian Countries 2016 - Trends in Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore

    This publication compiles comparable tax revenue statistics for Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. The model is the OECD Revenue Statistics database – a fundamental reference, backed by a well-established methodology, for OECD member countries. Extending the OECD methodology to Asian countries enables comparisons about tax levels and tax structures on a consistent basis, both among Asian economies and between OECD and Asian economies. This work has been is jointly undertaken by the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration and the OECD Development Centre.
  • 11-April-2016

    English

    Japan: Boosting Growth and Well-being in an Ageing Society

    With 25 years of sluggish economic growth, Japan’s per capita income has fallen from a level matching the average of the top half of OECD countries in the early 1990s to 14% below that today. Weak growth, together with rapid population ageing, has driven public debt into uncharted territory. Revitalising growth is thus the top priority for the Japanese government. With the labour force shrinking more rapidly than the population, per capita output can only grow through improvements in labour productivity and labour force participation. Japan’s highly-skilled labour force and its technological leadership can help close the gap with leading OECD countries in per capita income. But broad-based structural reforms, as envisaged in the third arrow of Abenomics, are needed to allow these strengths to fully achieve their potential. The initial impact of Abenomics in 2013 was impressive, and the reform process needs to continue.
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