The Ministry of Finance Japan has released a draft budget for 2018 and that report on the fiscal situation can be found here. I'll summarize my findings in this article.
First, let's focus on the trade and current account deficit in Japan. Both have been deteriorating rapidly in 2013, but since 2014 things have improved. Both the trade deficit and current account deficit have turned into surpluses.
The latest current account number in October 2017 was a surplus of 2180 billion yen. The reason for this is because the U.S. Stock Market has been on a tear and Japan's current account has benefited from this (see chart below from tradingeconomics). Net primary income from direct investment in overseas assets and portfolio investment in stocks and bonds amounted to 18 trillion yen, or 3.3% of GDP.
The chart below (created by Correlation Economics) illustrates that the government has cut back on spending (red chart) and the budget deficits have come down as a result (green chart). Spending is estimated at 98 trillion yen in 2017. It also shows how tax revenues in Japan (blue chart) have gone up due to a rising Japanese stock market. Tax revenues are expected to come in at 59 billion yen this year, the highest since 1990. This rise in tax revenues has decreased the budget deficits in Japan. The trend has improved, but the budget deficit still tends to move upwards.
Finally, let's have a look at the monetary policy and interest payments on government debt. As you know, the Bank of Japan is now implementing an unlimited bond buying scheme. In November, 2016, the central bank of Japan announced it will buy whatever amount of bonds to keep the 10 year bond yield at 0%. They are succeeding, 10 year Japanese bonds are still at 0%. The yen has underperformed since that announcement. This effect will be exacerbated as global bond yields are rising as we speak.
Because bond yields are so low, interest payments are set to be very low for fiscal 2017 (9.03 trillion yen). The interest payments as a percentage of tax revenue will drop to 15.27%.
