Global investors losing confidence in Abenomics

Tokyo

FOREIGN investors have had just about enough of Abenomics.

After pumping record amounts of cash into Japanese shares last year, they've hardly added to holdings in 2014. Inflows are down 94 per cent this year to 898 billion yen (S$9.85 billion), on pace for the smallest annual amount since the 2008 global financial crisis. The month of April 2013 alone registered almost three times as much foreign investment in the stock market as all of 2014.

These figures provide the clearest look at how global investors have become disillusioned with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after he pushed through a tax increase in April that sent Japan into recession. Fund managers from Sumitomo Mitsui…