Japan's latest economic road map focuses on investment in human resources, retains fiscal goal

The government endorsed a plan Friday to prioritize investment in human resource development to buttress Japan's economic growth and improve its tattered finances. Japan will maintain its pledge to achieve a surplus in the primary balance by fiscal 2020, while the government's annual economic policy blueprint said that another indicator used to gauge fiscal health -- the debt to gross domestic product ratio -- is also important. Ballooning social security costs have made it imperative to rein in spending as the graying of its population picks up pace. One key step on the agenda is to make preschool education free, although questions remain over how to fund such a policy. The blueprint only states that a decision should be reached by the end of the year. With a public debt twice the size of its GDP, Japan's fiscal health is already the worst of the major economies.