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.