Abe suggests higher chance that sales tax increase will be delayed

Tokyo

JAPANESE Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday that whether to proceed with a sales tax hike next April would be a "political decision", suggesting that the chance of delaying it may have increased given overseas headwinds hurting the economy.

Mr Abe has already delayed the tax increase once, and has long said that he would only delay it again if Japan were to suffer a shock on the magnitude of the 2008 collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers.

More recently, though, he said that a global economic contraction could also force a rethink and that it would be meaningless to press ahead if it crimped tax revenue by choking the economy.

Speaking in Parliament, Mr Abe reiterated that the government still planned to raise the tax to 10 per cent from the current 8 per cent early next year unless a global economic contraction or a L…