Get caught up in another counterfeiting scandal! The Japanese government falsely reported construction order data! Kishida Responded Urgently

Japanese political circles have exposed a counterfeiting scandal. On December 15, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio admitted at a parliamentary meeting that the Japanese government had misstated construction order data for years.

Previously, Japan's Asahi Shimbun reported that there was a phenomenon of duplicate bookkeeping in the statistics of Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

It is understood that about 12,000 companies in Japan have construction project lists submitted to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism for statistics every month, and the project list needs to be counted once a month when required. However, in the case that some companies failed to submit data in a timely manner that month, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism required local governments to charge the order volume of a few months ago as the data of the current month, which in turn caused enterprises that submitted data late to submit data for multiple months by combining data.

In addition, Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism will calculate the scale of funds involved in unsubmitted project companies based on the data of enterprises that have submitted projects in the current month. This move has led to duplicate bookkeeping by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, and the data does not meet the actual amount.

After the above information was reported, Kishida Fumio said, "It is deeply regrettable that such a thing has occurred, and the government will study measures as soon as possible to avoid the recurrence of such incidents." ”

The timing of the exposure is intriguing

There are concerns that since this data is also used to calculate gross domestic product (GDP), the Falsification of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism may lead to an overestimation of Japan's GDP.

However, Kishida Said that the data has improved since January last year, which has no impact on the economic growth data from 2020 to 2021.

On December 8, the Cabinet Office of Japan released a revised GDP revision for the third quarter of 2021, excluding price changes, the real GDP after excluding price changes factors decreased by 0.9% compared with the previous quarter, the conversion of the adult rate decreased by 3.6%, and the initial value of the 3.0% reduction from the annual rate was lowered, and the decline was greater than the market expectation. Affected by the COVID-19 emergency declaration and chip shortage, the sluggish performance of personal consumption and exports has dragged down the economic performance. GDP in 2020 was also revised, with real GDP down 4.5% from the previous year and slightly lower than the 4.4% reduction in initial value.

Pang Zhongpeng, a Japan expert at the Institute of Japanese Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the International Finance News that even if the consumption growth after the emergency declaration was lifted made the economy pick up in the fourth quarter, there are still worrying factors such as the continued spread of the new mutant strain, Omiljung, and throughout the 2021 fiscal year, whether the Japanese economy can enter the fast lane is still facing great challenges, of which the new crown epidemic is the biggest uncertainty factor.

In addition, Pang Zhongpeng said that the timing of the exposure of this matter is a bit intriguing. Japan's Asahi Shimbun specifically pointed out that "since 2013", this period of time is the period of Abe's administration, and now that Abe has stepped down, in November, Abe was appointed president of the Kiyowa Policy Research Association, the largest faction of the Liberal Democratic Party, to influence the policy direction of the Kishida cabinet from behind the scenes.

Data fraud is frequent

In 2019, the Abe government was caught up in the "data fraud" scandal. The report pointed out that at the end of 2018, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare was suspected of falsifying the monthly labor statistics data, which in turn triggered a comprehensive investigation of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. The results found that of the 56 basic statistical projects, 22 had delayed release, missed inspections and improper statistics, accounting for 40% of errors.

The BoJ's decision was also misled by these data, and it was the BoJ that made the economic decision to further quantitative easing by referring to the data of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Subsequently, Abe apologized for the incident, and the Abe government took remedial measures to issue additional benefits to the unemployed, and the rest of the group also paid insurance benefits and related compensation.

In fact, data fraud is not exclusive to politics. In recent years, fraud scandals in Japanese companies and the financial industry have also been exposed from time to time.

On June 29 this year, Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Company's product inspection data was debunked, and the counterfeiting lasted more than 30 years. According to the report, Mitsubishi Electric has been reporting fabricated factory quality inspection data to customers since the 1980s in an attempt to fool through the customs. In this regard, Mitsubishi Electric said that it has investigated the incident, and its public relations department claims that "there is no problem with the safety of the product" and that "skipping the factory quality inspection has no impact on the safety, function and performance of the product itself.".

Earlier, the Japanese financial industry also broke a fraud scandal. According to Xinhua Net, in 2017, a Japanese financial institution with a government background was exposed to illegal lending, and a large number of employees of the institution were suspected of issuing low-interest loans to unqualified small and medium-sized enterprises for eight consecutive years, accumulating 265 billion yen.

Because the financial institution is regulated by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiromi Seigeni fined himself two months' salary as a penalty.

Reporter: Yuan Yuan Special Author: Zhou Ye

Editor: Cheng Hui

Editor-in-Charge: BiDandan