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.