Some Christmas cheer for Japan that could head to a happier 2016

Tokyo

A YEAR which has brought more setbacks than successes for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Abenomics policies and for Bank of Japan (BOJ) governor Haruhiko Kuroda's quantitative easing (QE) strategy now looks likely to end on a more upbeat note than expected, according to new data on fiscal and inflation trends.

Detailed figures released on Christmas Day by Japan's Ministry of Finance showed that while recovery in the world's third largest economy has been uneven, the improvements it has brought to strained government revenues, in the form of rising corporate and personal tax revenues, has been significant.

At the same time, the BOJ, which has been subjected to strong criticism for setting what many see as an over-ambitious annual inflation target of 2 per cent, has produced a new index suggesting that annual underlying inflation …