New York: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Wednesday that his government will outline a package of fresh economic measures early next week that will chiefly cope with soaring prices.

The government plans to compile a supplementary budget for fiscal 2023 through next March to finance the package and submit it to the Diet, Japan’s parliament, at an appropriate time, Kishida told a press conference in New York.

He reiterated that the economic measures will be fully formulated by the end of October.

“The economic situation in our country is still unstable,” he said. “This is a critical moment of whether it can enter a new stage.”

“We’ll speedily implement bold economic measures with an emphasis on structural wage increases and expansion of investment by the public and private sectors,” he added.

As items to be included in the outline, Kishida cited measures to deal with surging prices, strengthen the trends of raising wages and expanding investment, and promote social reforms to overcome the country’s declining population.

On a possible dissolution of the House of Representatives, the Diet’s all-important lower chamber, for a snap election, Kishida noted he reshuffled his cabinet and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership team just last week.

Saying that his current focus is tackling issues that cannot be left unaddressed, Kishida stated, “I’m not thinking about anything else right now.”

Also at the press conference, Kishida again urged Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, declaring that the Russian aggression is unacceptable.

He vowed to make more efforts to devise concrete proposals to limit the use of the veto power of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

Asked why his general debate speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday did not refer to the release into the sea of tritium-containing treated water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the site of the March 2011 triple meltdown, he said he focuses on international cooperation.

He expressed eagerness to continue efforts to win more support for the water discharge from the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. plant through international conferences and bilateral meetings.

JIJI Press