TOKYO -- The Japanese government has seen an overwhelming surge of interest in subsidies to bring manufacturing back as the coronavirus pandemic highlights the risk of having supply chains concentrated in a single region, particularly China.
The program to promote domestic manufacturing had 220 billion yen ($2.07 billion) earmarked in the supplementary fiscal 2020 budget. In the first round, which ended in June, the government approved 57 projects totaling 57.4 billion yen, or over half the 90 applications.
