Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has touted the nation’s economic prospects at a conference hosted by Goldman Sachs Group in Hong Kong, at a time when investor interest in the nation is surging on the back of a stock market boom.
"Now Japan has a golden opportunity to completely overcome low economic growth and a deflationary environment that have persisted for a quarter of a century,” Kishida said in a video address Tuesday at the Goldman Sachs Global Macro Conference.
Attendees in the Asian financial hub might have seen the irony in the remarks, which came just as China faces a deepening stock market rout and the economy shows signs of the deflation that plagued Japan for decades. In contrast, optimism over Japan’s economic revival has propelled the benchmark Topix index to its highest level in 34 years.