0.8 percent drop in GDP is a signal calling for political change: JCP

The government statistics on Japan's GDP (gross domestic product) for April-June announced on August 7, showed a negative growth rate of 0.8 percent rate. This is equivalent to an annual rate of minus 3.2 percent. If price fluctuations are counted, the annual rate will be minus 10.3 percent.

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi published a statement on the day, pointing out that the GDP figure indicates that the Koizumi Cabinet's "structural reform" policy which supports major banks and large corporations will do irreparable damage to the people's living conditions.

He said GDP declined when the unemployment rate rose to a record 5.0 percent, and job security is being threatened more seriously than ever.

Referring to the government plans to allow major banks to write off the bad loans they hold and to adversely revise the social services, including an increase in insured patients' shares in medical treatment costs from the present 20 percent to 30 percent, Ichida denounced them as an imposition of an unbearable extra burden on the people in the name of "structural reform."

What makes it worse is that the government has dismissed the 5 percent unemployment rate as unavoidable, and encourages large corporations to promote corporate restructuring including worker dismissals as part of "structural reform," he added.

Alarmed at such policies that severely damage people's living conditions and the nation's economy, Ichida called for a drastic change of the economic policy from one favoring major banks and big businesses to one caring for the people's livelihoods. He pledged that the JCP would exert the utmost effort to overcome the critical economic situation. (end)