CHICAGO -- Japan will raise the 8% consumption tax to 10% as scheduled in October, barring a major financial crisis, a top official in the ruling party told Nikkei, while acknowledging that the government may need to spend more to shore up the economy.
"I haven't heard anyone say that we could see something on the scale of the Lehman shock," Katsunobu Kato, head of the Liberal Democratic Party's General Council, said here Wednesday, referring to the global financial crisis a decade ago. "It's appropriate for us to proceed as planned."
