Japan’s Top Creditor Title at Risk as Surplus End Looms
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Japan risks losing its position as the world’s top creditor nation, as dwindling savings become insufficient to finance growing public debt, a Bloomberg News survey of economists indicates.
A run of current-account surpluses that drove Japan’s net asset position to the largest in the world starting in 1991 is set to reverse, according to 10 of 16 economists in a Bloomberg News survey, with nine projecting sustained deficits by the end of 2020. Japan had net assets of 325 trillion yen ($3.2 trillion) at the end of 2013, with China in second place with 208 trillion yen, according to Japan’s finance ministry.