Projections submitted to the government's economic and fiscal policy council, which was held in Tokyo on Tuesday

(Forecasts prepared by the Cabinet Office)

Under the government's "baseline" scenario, which assumes real GDP growth of less than 1% and nominal GDP growth of around 1.5% level in the medium-to-long term:

  • Primary balance deficit will be 9.2t yen, or 1.7% of nominal GDP in FY2020
  • Primary balance deficit will be 11t yen or 2.1% of nominal GDP in FY2018

(note that the government target was to reduce the deficit to 1% of GDP in Fiscal year 2018)