Business executives in Japan are starting to voice concerns over what they see as an unacceptably slow vaccine rollout in one of the world’s richest countries, a rare chorus of warnings over increasing risks to any economic recovery.
"Among developed nations, Japan is the biggest problem,” Takehiko Kakiuchi, chief executive officer of Mitsubishi Corp., said during a recent earnings briefing. As one of the country’s largest trading companies, Mitsubishi has broad visibility across all sectors of the economy, from heavy machinery and petrochemicals, to property and retail.
While Japan has fared better during the pandemic compared with its Western peers — deaths and infection numbers at only a fraction of many developed nations — its vaccine rollout has been shockingly slow. Just 2% of the nation’s population has been inoculated, the lowest among the 37 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker. That compares with about 41% in both the United States and the United Kingdom.