The government may follow the U.S. lead and inject capital into large companies to help avert bankruptcies as the country grapples with recession, the ruling party's second in command said.

"Should a big company go bankrupt, 10,000 people could lose their jobs," Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Hiroyuki Hosoda said in an interview Wednesday. "Preventing that is our priority."

Hosoda, 64, said the LDP will propose enacting the new rescue measures before the fiscal year ends this month to avoid a "March crisis" of massive corporate failures. Plans also include widening access to bank loans, he said. He declined to specify what form a capital injection would take.