By Linda Sieg and Yuko Yoshikawa
TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is determined to cut Japan's corporate tax rate, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said, a step experts say could boost firms' global competitiveness and make Japan more attractive to foreign investment.
Suga, who serves as the government's top spokesman and is one of Abe's most trusted aides, also said Japan's participation in talks on a U.S.-led free trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, was a vital part of Abe's growth strategy, the "Third Arrow" in his "Abenomics" policy that also includes hyper-easy monetary policy and fiscal spending.
"The prime minister has made a definite statement regarding a reduction in the corporate tax rate," Suga told Reuters in an interview. "We want to achieve this."
Finance ministry officials have expressed concern that cutting the corporate tax rate, considered high by global standards at about 35 percent for national and local taxes combined, would worsen the public debt - already the worst among advance nations.
But Suga said: "Whatever the finance ministry says, the government policy will not change. We will consider what will happen to government finances if the corporate tax rate is lowered. But the prime minister has said all along that a reduction is necessary. We want to do that properly."
(Editing by Edmund Klamann)
