Financial experts on Friday were quick to voice their concern over the appointment of Jun Azumi as finance minister, saying the rookie Cabinet member will allow Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to push his own fiscal policies and may lack the authority to command the ministry's bureaucrats.
"Azumi's abilities are unknown, and it doesn't seem like he has (financial and economic) experience," said Hisashi Yamada, chief economist at Japan Research Institute Co.
Selecting someone with no ministerial experience for the key post could simply mean that Noda, who was vice finance minister under Yukio Hatoyama, the first Democratic Party of Japan prime minister, and as finance minister in the administration of Hatoyama's successor, Naoto Kan, plans to take charge of the government's financial policies himself, Yamada said.