The Japanese Government has announced it will extend its gasoline fuel subsidy until the end of 2024 and will temporarily reintroduce relief on utility bills over the summer. In October 2023, Japan had already decided to extend the subsidies from end-2023 to April 2024, and was planning to reduce support for electricity and gas fees starting in May 2024.
Japan introduced the current subsidy program for fuel prices in January 2022 and the program for electricity and gas bills in early 2023. The two programs were originally scheduled to end in September 2023, but were extended to deal with new price increases.
To mitigate the impact of rising oil product prices, the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry (METI) had set aside JPY6,200bn (US$41bn) for January 2022-December 2023, as well as allocated JPY3,100bn (US$21bn) to cap rises in retail electricity and city gas prices throughout 2023 to ease inflation.
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