Japanese lawmakers pass record Covid-19 budget
Tokyo
JAPAN'S powerful lower house of parliament approved an emergency budget worth nearly US$300 billion on Wednesday, doubling the scale of measures to pep up the world's third-biggest economy after Covid-19 tipped it into recession.
Consumer spending has slowed to a crawl despite Japan's relatively low infection numbers and death toll from the pandemic, prompting the first economic downturn since 2015.
In response, lawmakers approved a second exceptional budget of 31.91 trillion yen (S$4…
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