Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is on course to raise Japan's sales tax as scheduled in a crucial step toward fixing the nation's tattered finances, despite calls in his government to water down the increase, senior coalition officials said on Wednesday.
Abe has said he faces a "difficult decision" choosing between his top priority of fostering growth in the world's third-biggest economy and starting to rein in the industrial world's heaviest public-debt burden.
He has instructed his government to consider alternatives to the two-stage doubling of the sales tax - similar to a goods and service tax in other countries - such as implementing it more gradually than planned.
But the top tax officials in Abe's ruling coalition parties told Reuters the premier is on course to raise the sales tax to 8 percent in April from 5 percent now and then to 10 percent in October 2015 - Tokyo's most significant fiscal reform in decades.