Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo has asked the world leaders on Wednesday, to reconstruct trust in the international trading system and urged the United States, India, and China to take fresh steps into the World Trade Organization (WTO).
While citing some examples set by his country Japan for creating a new hope-driven economy, Abe asserted that Japan has “defeated the defeatism” by urging “womenomics” to handle the problem of its aging population.
As the news chairperson of G20 summit, Abe also said Japan is always committed to preserving and boosting the open, free and rule-based international order.
While addressing the World Economic Forum annual meet 2019, Abe said when he took the office in 2012, many thought that Japan has been doomed and the most raised argument was about Japan’s population aging and could not grow.
According to Reuters news reports, Abe said: “It was a wall of despair, a wall of Japan pessimism. Since that time, our working-age population has dropped by 4.5 million people. We have responded by pushing hard for ‘womenomics’, encouraging more and then still more women to work, while lessening the burden on women’s shoulder.”
As a result, now the country has around 2 million plus women employed, female labour rate has hit 67 percent, which is said to be more than the US, said Abe. He added that all of this has “defeated defeatism”.
Abe said: “Meanwhile, the number of people over 65 still actively working has also increased by 2 million, thanks to our policies that enable them to keep working… Out of every 100 college graduates looking to work, 98 find employment, also a record number.”
While referring to hosting the G20 summit in June, Abe said, “I would like Osaka G20 to be long remembered as the summit that started world-wide data governance.”
He said, “It will be great if every one of us, from the US, Europe, Japan, China, and India, to leapfrogging countries in Africa, share our efforts and our successes in breathing fresh life into the WTO.”
While asserting Japan, Europe, and the US must join to facilitate changes within the WTO, Abe said, “The Osaka Track, needless to say, will make the WTO more relevant in the age of the data-driven economy… hope matters more than anything when it comes to generating growth.”
He said, “ Most importantly, this year, for the first time in as long as 200 years, His Majesty the Emperor of Japan will abdicate and a new Emperor will take the throne. It is the dawn of a new era.”
“Japan, now reinvigorated and revitalized, with your embrace, will continue to be one of the foremost open, democratic, and law-abiding contributors to peace and growth in the world.”
Claiming that Japan is growing from the depth, Abe said, “A long-awaited positive feedback cycle is taking root, with growth in employment and income generating greater demand and even more employment.”