Minister: Japan ready with money for IMF bailout

Yuri Kageyama , The Associated Press , Tokyo Fri, 10/31/2008 12:24 PM World
Japan is ready to provide some of its ample cash for any International Monetary Fund bailouts for struggling nations to help stabilize the growing gobal financial crisis, the finance minister said Friday.
Japan will make that offer along with proposals about accounting standards and other regulatory adjustments needed to fix the growing economic woes at a world summit in Washington Nov. 15, Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa told reporters.
Nakagaa did not say the acceptance of its proposals would be needed to get any of the money but he said Japan expects to play a greater international leadership role on the international stage.
He said the IMF has about $210 billion funds but that may not be enough.
"Japan is ready if that prove insufficient," he said, adding that Japan has $1 trillion in possible funding from its foreign currency reserves. "We see lending to the IMF basically as risk-free."
He did not give specifics of what Japan's proposals may be, stressing that Prime Minister Taro Aso was still hammering out details.
Nakagawa reiterated his earlier remarks and the views of other Japanese politicians that Japan wishes to exercise political leadership in offering its money and experience in wresting itself out of its bad debt woes of the 1990s.
He said Europe and the U.S. have historical experience with the Great Depression, but Japan has more recent experience and is in a better position to share its expertise.
"We were able to get ourselves out of our problems without help from any other nation," he said at the Japan Press Center.
Earlier this week British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the International Monetary Fund needs more money to bail out struggling countries.
Brown has called on countries such as China and the oil-rich Persian Gulf states to fund the bulk of an increase in the International Monetary Fund's bailout pot. The IMF is giving Hungary, Iceland and Ukraine loans and is in discussions with Belarus.
The International Monetary Fund said Wednesday it is creating a new program to get money quickly to developing countries with strong economies that are facing cash crunches in the global financial crisis.
Nakagawa said countries need to respond quickly and work together to get out of the financial problems that started with the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and is now spreading around the world.
"Japan is taking leadership," he said.
He said Japan was also doing its part domestically with stimulus spending packages and regulatory changes to prevent a further plunge on the Tokyo stock market.
On Thursday, Tokyo unveiled a stimulus package worth 27 trillion yen ($275 billion) to shore up the world's No. 2 economy, including benefits to households, loans to small- and mid-sized businesses and discounts on highway tolls.