Japanese PM Shinzo Abe urged by Nobel-prize winner Joseph Stiglitz not to raise nation's sales tax

Nobel-prize winner Joseph Stiglitz urged Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe not to raise the nation’s sales tax next year, instead encouraging the premier to consider other forms of taxation that could stimulate the world’s third-largest economy.

“A consumption tax increase now is going in the wrong direction,” the professor of economics at Columbia University told reporters in Tokyo on Wednesday after a meeting with the prime minister, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda. “A few years ago, no one would have anticipated that the global economy would be as weak as it is today.” Japan was supposed to have increased the consumption levy to 10% from 8% last October, but Abe in Nov 2014 became convinced the economy couldn’t stand the hike. He may be thinking twice about the current plan to raise the tax in April 2017 as influential economists join the tide of public opinion for another postponement.