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JAPAN's remarkable recovery from last year's tragic
earthquake leaves big lessons unlearnt. The economy bounced back more quickly
than expected after March's earthquake, tsunami and resulting nuclear leak.
But the government flunked a bigger test by failing to push
through painful reforms. Now Japan is a year older, deeper in debt and facing
the same economic downward spiral it was in before the catastrophe.
The Japanese spirit of gaman - enduring the unendurable -
enabled the country to cope with the disaster.
Industrial production is on track to return in March 2012 to
where it was at the end of 2010, according to Merrill Lynch.
That's small triumph: gross domestic product (GDP) is likely
to grow just 1.7% in 2012 and slow thereafter, the IMF projects. Japan's trade
balance fell into deficit last year for the first time in 31 years, and it has
net debt equivalent to 131% of GDP.
The post-earthquake period was a chance to administer
economic remedies. Civic-minded citizens were switching off appliances and
taking stairs instead of lifts to help conserve power.
But squabbling politicians squandered the mood of public
sacrifice. Rather than cut pensions or raise taxes to help ease the national
debt, the government has managed only to pass ¥21 trillion ($253.6bn) of
emergency reconstruction packages. Winning opposition support for those cost
former prime minister Naoto Kan his job.
Progress on more contentious reforms - such as doubling the
5% consumption tax - has ground to a halt amid political infighting. Corporate
crises too are allowed to drag on: think of the accounting scandal at Olympus,
or the prolonged insolvency of Tokyo Electric, the utility at the centre of
last year's nuclear scare.
Japan still won't tolerate more immigration to offset a
declining birthrate that, by government estimates, will reduce its population
by 30% in 50 years.
For now, such gloomy demographics are keeping Japan from
lurching into fiscal crisis: its greying savers help finance its massive debt.
When they start drawing down more than they save, it will be too late.
Japan has managed to struggle back to where it was before
the disaster, but it has wasted valuable time that could have been used to
avert its own fiscal reckoning.
- Reuters
* Wayne Arnold is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
