Japan's govt may extend rescue plan

Japan's government may consider further measures to jolt the economy out of a recession, Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said.

If the 5 trillion yen ($52 billion) stimulus plan unveiled last month is insufficient, "we may think beyond it," Nakagawa said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Tokyo yesterday. For now, the government is focusing on implementing the package as well as an earlier plan announced in August, he said.

Leaders from the Group of 20 nations last weekend urged that governments consider fiscal stimulus measures as part of a "broader policy response" to the global financial crisis. Japan is the most indebted nation in the industrialized world, limiting the government's ability to spend more money bolstering an economy that shrank in the each of the past two quarters.