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Japan makes

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key economic

minister

TOKYO: Japan's newly appointed Economic Planning Agency (EPA) Minister Isamu Miyazaki is well-known in the corridors of the agency he will head, having begun his career there as a civil servant nearly 50 years ago.

The 71-year-old Miyazaki, chairman of Daiwa Institute of Research, served as vice EPA minister in 1979 before retiring from the agency two years later to head the private think tank.

The economic expert, who was a private economic adviser to Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, takes over the cabinet post at a time when Japan urgently needs to revive its fragile economy and get it back on a recovery path.

Hit by the strong yen and sluggish exports, the economy has struggled to recover from the recession that followed the collapse of the 1980s "bubble" of high stock and land prices.

The government admitted last month that the gradual recovery had come to a halt in the face of the strong yen and a recent slowdown in the U.S. economy.-Reuter